NeXus
by Trench Kamen
Summary: The ultimate anime and fiction multiverse crossroad. Irreverence is a virtue. It makes so much sense that it does not make any sense at all. Banned in -456 countries. Nonsense suffocates the plot and morals. It is quite a bit like 'real life'.
1. Particle 00: Zero

Welcome to something utterly ludicrous. If one wants a long, long explanation on the origins of this idea, please visit my website /fiction (for some reason FF.net will not display a URL. Go from my user lookup) and look at the author's notes page for NeXus. I do not have space to post them on FF.net.

I don't own what I don't own. I do own Mana. He is my slave. He is my deranged inner child. Yes, self-insertation. Mary Sue, no. Don't leave yet. Give it a chance. I have candy.

--------------------------

Particle 0: Zero

They say that every person has an inner universe. Do not ask who 'they' is. It is a proverbial 'they'.

Let us assume for a moment that each person's imagination creates a Road of its own, its own world. It is a world that transcends the tangible reality and creates its own reality.

In its purest, undeterred form, only the creator fully understands his or her own inner universe or imagination. Sure, the creator can communicate the world as closely as he or she can – through writing, drawing, spoken word, music – but the world only exists exactly and perfectly as the creator sees it within his or her own head.

Now, let us assume that another person hears the creator's story. It sparks this person's imagination. Sure, the person soon has a part of the imagination that is very similar to the creator's – they know the same characters, the same stories, the same plot – but there is always difference, minute or grand, that lies in the interpretation. One will try to tie everything into one's most core inner truth. The inner truths change. The interpretations change.

And a subtle character that is given nebulous dialogue and limited expression is interpreted a different way, to have some ideals or feelings that can be sensed but are never expressed. And even if they were openly admitted, the character is probably lying anyway to cover something up or just to confuse the hell out of you.

And a highly symbolic occurrence is interpreted a million ways by a million different people. Sure, the interpretation is often highly similar, and there are influential fan writers who write theories that become almost accepted norm, but even accepting those writings one will view it in a minutely different way, or even a larger-than-minutely (see: grandiosely) different way. 

But all of these things are well known in the hearts of every person, or are they? Is everybody aware of this rift? Some radicals once tried to eliminate this rift by smashing every human consciousness into one big primordial soup [1], but this did not go so well. [2] Call the rift the "A.T. Field" (© GAINAX).

Welcome to the world of fiction. Fiction spawns fanfiction. Crossovers. Spoofs. Bad writing and good writing. Opinions. What defines 'good' and 'bad', anyway? OOC. PWP. Mary Sue. Gary Stu. Lemon. Lime. Yaoi. Yuri. Hetero. AU. A million-and-one acronyms for the same idea: "THIS IS MY INNER UNIVERSE; REVIEW IT AND VALIDATE IT." The capitols are necessary for the desperation, especially with the people that like to write "plz R&R!!!!!" next to every work. 

Let us assume that every road – both 'official' (the ones that make money) and 'fan-made' (the ones that don't and will be sued if they do) – merges or finds points at which to run parallel. Well, not exactly merges, per say, but mixes. It is a mixture, not a chemical reaction. Or maybe there are minute chemical reactions here-and-there, only with select particles and often theoretically 'impossible' [3]. In any case, stuff happens. Things mix up in a huge proverbial mixing bowl. The bowl is the 'NeXus'. The capitol X is necessary for aesthetic enhancement [4]. 

What is the purpose of the NeXus? Unknown. You might as well ask about the purpose of human consciousness or parsley. All that needs to be understood is that fiction is going to take a spin in a centrifuge. It is the 'ultimate crossover of all things, ninety percent of which is anime'. Crossovers are notoriously horrendous and reliant upon things such as hack (or dot hack) slapstick comedy and liberal helpings of OOC-ness. 

But this must be remembered: things thrown into a centrifuge often smash and break [5].

The result is seldom pretty or sensible. 

-----------

*I stole this footnotes format from _Discworld_, like the writing style. Don't sue me, Terry Pratchett. I love you.

[1] The Human Instrumentality Project. Watch the last few episodes of _Evangelion_. 

[2] According to the anime, the only reason that we will not all be primordial soup in 2015 is because a fourteen-year-old with the security of the average otaku decided that after all, he wanted to be himself. This after he realized that if he was primordial soup, he would not be able to 'interact' with the nude women throwing themselves at him in his dream sequences.

[3] Like two positive ions bonding or ninety-nine percent of all instantaneous[I] PWP yaoi relationships. The chances are a million to one. But, to quote Pratchett once again, "million-to-one chances happen nine times out of ten".

            [I] The_ instantaneous _is the impossible part, without any backstory or development. Just "hey, you're here and I'm here, there's a bed, let's fuck like          animals and cuddle afterwards. By the way, I hate you."

[4] Doesn't it look so much cooler and more interesting? It's so nonconformist.

[5] They also mutilate, merge, mix and crash, and deform themselves. Sometimes melt. Sometimes become a gas. Sometimes. But it's all _for the sake of a plot_, so it's _okay_.

-----------------

Ohtori Akio was bored.

Unfortunately, Akio, being an illusion master of sorts, is one of the most powerful people in a universe entirely made of people's fabrications and ideas. If imagination is considered an illusion, that is. There are different opinions. One may ask Socrates or Aristotle.

When Akio's world was 'pure' (definitely not in the moral sense, but in the fact that it was not thrown into any nexi of any sort), he found himself abandoned as a proverbial prince of the coffins. His only key to start once again his hollow revolution games left, quite literally, leaving behind her glasses and her pet's necktie. These items are not helpful in regaining a revolution. They are heavily symbolic, yes, and that symbolism is easy to debate, but they do not summon any Swords of Dios or Heavenly Castles in the Sky.

This is not for lack of trying on Akio's part, though.

Indeed, Akio's ennui had reached such a level that he had tried many things to start _chaos_ in Ohtori Academy. Things had quieted down. 

Of course, Akio is not such a person that he relishes in mindless chaos, nor does he create chaos for its own sake. He always has a motive. Lately, though, there has been no way of retaining his former self or the Power of Dios. He is all too aware of this.

However, Akio is a person who likes action. When the most significant development in the academy is that so-and-so is pregnant with somebody's child while dating so-and-so who also has an illegitimate child in France from his last vacation, and that said child is probably going to grow up and kill the father, it is not enough action to keep Akio from the brink of insanity.

He was already driven there by Tenjou Utena. The proverbial pebbles were showering over the brink into the proverbial abyss, and his was being driven further over the proverbial edge into said proverbial abyss.

Insane Akio is not good.

As it were, the Fallen Prince of the Coffins was sitting at his desk in his planetarium tower, hands intertwined in front of his mouth, staring at the screen of his laptop. The screens of the planetarium were folded up, revealing the blood-red sky and setting sun. It is a law of the anime world that the color of the sun be symbolic of something, and that people debate it on message boards. Commence, otaku.

But with Akio, where we were. He was aware that things were changing outside his room, stirring and mixing. Logic was rearranging itself. The flow of time was becoming relative. 

Something was changing. Chaos was impending. 

Akio slid his long fingers across the trackball of his laptop in circular motions, half-watching the cursor loop across his screen. He had found a website featuring himself. Not only himself, mind, but Utena, Anthy, even Chuchu. Oddly, the writer of this website, whoever it was, knew far more about him than he knew he had ever disclosed about himself to any soul other than Anthy, and he was sure this website did not belong to Anthy. For one, most of the interpretation and information was _inaccurate_. 

As another point, tHe EnTiRe WeBsIte wAs wRiTtEn lIke tHiS!!!

Akio tapped his fingers on the trackball. Airheaded though Anthy might seem, she did not write with odd capitalization. It symbolized an airheaded _and _overly-energetic personality, not a façade of airheadness.

_It probably takes more energy to tYpE LiKe tHaT than to copy and paste the text into something with a spell checker_, he thought while reading the sentence "hE rApEs hIs sIsTeR iN tHe MoViE bY DrUgInG sOm whine." He sighed and ran his fingertips through the side of his bound hair. _And I do not recall being in any movie in which I raped Anthy. Even if we made a 'movie', she would submit willingly in the first place. I do not need to result to drugging wine._ –

---------

_NO! NO! Too much inner monologue! It disrupts the flow of the prose! Makes it look like he overanalyzes! It's unnatural! It seems like an actor reading carefully written scripting and not a human! Bad!_

_Make him stop!_

---------

Akio suddenly found himself incapable of continuing thought -- not from any lack of intelligence, but from some interference settling deep into his mind. The more he tried to wrap his mind around a thought, it slipped through with no development or comprehension. He was unable to think.

In addition to this, a small voice in the back of his mind demanded action.

Akio stood up and paced around the room. _My thought flow was disrupted by something – lack of sleep or what, I do not know – but I feel the presence of an outside force. It is something as manipulative as myself. I know that it feels different when I lose my own mind of my own fault. I recognize my own stupidity and shortcomings._

Akio stopped and looked at the computer screen. The website was still on the screen, focused on white Times New Roman text over a tiled background of the Shadow Girls and with a picture of himself set into the text lines. Something about it looked very amateurish.

Akio leaned over and scrolled down the text to the bottom of the page. The following inscription was at the bottom of the page in minute text:

_Ohtori Akio © Saito chiho and Kunihiko Ikuhara. i dont own him!!!!!_

_Well, damn straight you don't own me. _Akio ran his fingers along his hair again. _Copyright? What in the HELL? Copyright these people? I'm not somebody's char--_

Akio stopped and stared at the screen for a moment. 

". . . . . . . . . . . . . ."

Everything started to piece together. The website. The information. The interpretations. The interference. 'Interference'… for convenience of a plot?

Akio spun his chair back around to face the computer by its back and sat down. There were just a few more things he wanted to confirm…

----------------------------

"Dead?"

The Great Will of the Macrocosm stared over her teacup at the man across the low table. Indeed, to create the impression that she was staring was a feat on behalf of the animators, for her face – and all of her body but her arms – was shrouded in a mantle of the night sky. It was an effect of the viewer's mind and the position of her arms that helped enhance this image. 

The viewer also found it easy to see that even though both the man, the Will, and the table were floating in the center of space _with_ air, they were somehow able to kneel. How the Will knelt, once again, was a trick of the celluloid.

"Dead," she repeated. She took a sip of her tea. "He was killed off tragically. It was very lovely. He had an image song playing in the background and several slow-panning sequences of him falling and of his comrades screaming and crying--"

"That's no good. I wanted to do something with this character."

The Will took another sip of her tea. The man across the table was wearing a white lab coat and had short, navy blue hair, a finely detailed face, and long eyelashes – a true archetypical bishounen. His eyes, however, were an utterly flat gray. One might guess that the animators merely did not draw a defined iris or pupil, but that would be an incorrect guess. Something about his aura said that there was a reason.

Besides, he was just as creepy as all hell. The camera always focused on his eyes to let the audience know this without question.

"Well, I could--"

"How, exactly, did he die?"

"He fell into a raging river."

The man stared at the Will silently. "He fell into a raging river," he repeated flatly.

"Oh, yes. To save the life of his best friend's girlfriend, who he himself fell in love with and tried to seduce. But he realized that he could not betray his best friend and so sacrificed his life in penance for his sin and so that they could live on."

"I see."

"The funeral was very nice. The couple placed flowers on his grave and cried. The man  held the girl to his chest and the wind blew--"

"But about that…"

"--and there was a sequence in which the fallen man's smiling face appeared in the clouds to symbolize that he would always be with them in their hearts, and that he would always watch over them--"

"Wait a minute." The man folded his long fingers into a cradle and rested them on his lips. "This was never in the anime, was it, now?"

"Well…" The Will fiddled with her teacup. "Not exactly--"

"It was in a fanfic? A doujinshi?"

"Fanfic…"

"Uh-huh." The man narrowed his eyes. "And what validates this over the original creation?"

The Will swallowed nervously. "…there was an image song because the writer wrote it as an original songfic," she finished weakly.

"………….."

Will tried to appear busy by pouring more tea. Her hands shook so badly that the tea sloshed all over the table and dripped into the starry oblivion below. The man grabbed her wrist.

"Listen. I know well, as you know well, that fanfics never override the original work. This is a cardinal rule of the universe."

"But if everything here is determined by imagination, what validates one imagination over another?"

"Originality, Will, of which you have none." The man cocked his head to the side. Will winced and looked away beneath her mantle. "And do not remind me that I am the same as you, because I know well. But I, unlike you, am so skilled at weaving my stolen ideas into a tapestry that none ever recognize the nature of the threads."

Will did not respond. The man frowned.

"It means that I am a genius and you are an emotional girl who harkens to stereotypical, second-rate fics with superficial angst and great amounts of fluffy romance."

"They're _sweet_. And what validates your idea of what is 'valid' over mine?"

"What validates that aforementioned fic over any other fic out there, if you see all works as equal in validity?"

Will thought about this for a moment. "…I liked it."

"I see." The man dropped her wrist. "Well… I can see that I am going to get no help from you."

The man stood up and turned his back. He thought of something witty to say, but nothing was coming to mind at the moment. The Gods of Style and Charisma had been abducted by some high school students during last prom season, and they hadn't been back to work in the NeXus since.

"…you have hack plots."

Will sniffed hard. "Don't flame me. Please."

"What, you can't take a little criticism? You are so insecure about your writing that others opinions matters so much?"

Will started crying. "I write to be READ."

"Yes, you really are an SJ, aren't you."

Will sniffed. "Pardon?"

"SJ. Sensor-Judger. Meyers-Biggs. Jungian psychology. It means that you search for security and you value the opinions of society above all else."

Will thought about this. "That's such a closed interpretation."

"Well, I'm an NT." The man decided that it was time to say goodbye to all of this and hello to oblivion, which is where he began to walk.

Perhaps it would have been kinder to him had he asked about the wife and kids.

At this point, Akio walked directly _into_ 'all of this', stepping out of a hairline rip in the fabric of macrocosmic logic and running straight into the man. The man tripped back on his heels as Akio stepped around his ankles. The men went down in a heap.

At about this point, yaoi-writing spectators around the multiverse were suddenly inspired with a way to get two men very leg-entangled for no reason whatsoever. This lead to more things while still being on the floor.

Will giggled.

This was by far, as we know, not the most unkind thing oblivion would do, but it is known for getting its revenge slowly and at the most opportune time. For something theorized to have no consciousness, it can be malicious.

Akio was the first to untangle his long legs and stand up from the jumble. He looked around and the focused on the Will.

"So… you have decided to settle your tiny area of influence in my academy for a while."

The unnamed man stood up and straightened the collar of his lab coat. "Well… Ohtori Akio, you have finally become self-aware in the highest sense."

"It is unavoidable, considering the circumstances currently underway in this 'NeXus'." Akio smiled. "And who might you be."

The man opened his mouth--

"Mana," said the Will. "Mana, but he is called Scienziato by some superstitious people. It is how you would hear him in ghost stories, anyway."

Mana glared at the Will. Akio smirked.

"Mana and Scienziato, a scientist of magic. A little bit of a paradox or an oxymoron, isn't it?"

"Paradox, maybe. Oxymoron, no." The man watched Akio carefully. "I quite dislike my 'real' name. But more and more I have seen evidence that 'science' and 'magic' coincide. Ever heard of alchemy? Sorcerers? The forefathers of science?"

"I am far older than you can guess." Akio walked over to the table. "But at the moment I have something to ask of this lady."

"Well, good luck getting any help out of her." Mana began to walk back into oblivion. He slowly dissipated into a mistlike ghost. "I am going to take my experiments into my own hands."

The last shadow of Mana's coat disappeared. Will sipped her tea.

"How did you find this place?"

"I have my resources." Akio leaned over until the tip of his nose was tickling the viscous mantle of stars surrounding the approximate location of Will's face. "And I want you to help me with something."

"…do you?"

Will was familiar with the _Shoujo Kakumei Utena_ universe, and as such she was damn aware of how Akio convinced people to help him on his various 'ideas'. It usually and always involved the oldest form of persuasion known to any conscious and manipulative creature with hormones. 

Akio kissed the Will.

Will paused. The edge of Akio's profile was buried in the cold mantle of stars, and was now working its way down into her neck. The man knew what he was doing. Every time Pedro tried to pull something like this off he ended up slobbering all over the place and leaving marks—

_Oh, that's going to leave a mark,_ she thought as Akio sucked on the hollow of her neck. _Wait… he's reading my thoughts. He has some sort of ac--Aaaaah! dammit, don't stop! Get back down there!_

Akio had looked up and was now smirking at Will. Will stared back at him. _So, he's not going to bother with any psychological manipulation or engraining before getting physical--_

"Do we understand each other?"

_This means I don't have to listen to him spout philosophy. How much experience does he have again?_

"Pedro!" the proverbial (or not so) angel on her shoulder shouted in her ear. "Remember Pedro! He loves you as you love him! He's so loyal to you, even though what is technically 'you' betrayed him twice over and--!"

"Sex god," the corresponding devil hissed. "Come on, girl, you're not getting anything good out of that simpleton! This man knows how to treat a woman!"

"But sex is evil without love!--"

Akio pinched the small angel off of Will's hidden shoulder. There was a nasty crunch. The angel screamed.

"Thanks, man. I owe you again." The devil saluted Akio with her tiny pitchfork locked under her arm, then jumped off of Will's shoulder and onto Akio's. She pressed her elbow into his neck and leaned on it nonchalantly. "So I'll be seeing you tonight?"

Akio flicked the remnants of wings off of his fingers. "Of course."

The devil gave Akio one last swish up the neck with her tail before disappearing. 

Will stared at Akio.

"What are you planning on doing to this holy NeXus?"

Akio leaned back down to the Will's height and hissed in her ear. "I am just planning on having a little fun. And I would call this world far from holy. The world is a cesspool of sin, as you know well. Even then, it is not so black-and-white as that, is it? It is a world of _humans_."

"Macroverse, universe," she corrected absentmindedly as Akio leaned down his former location on her neck. "And I only control a small little pocket. It's more of a microcosm than a macrocosm. A macrocosm in its own world."

"Mmmm. It's enough for now." Akio looked up and cupped the Will's chin in his fingers. "Let us weave illusions together. Will you help me?"

Will pushed Akio's head back where it belonged, in her opinion. "Sure. Just don't stop unless you feel like going further or something."

--------

Mana crossed his arms and perched on Michelangelo's Dome, his preferred place to sit over the cityscape of Rome, sulk, and look obligatorily dramatic and gorgeous. Scary, one might add. This is also obligatory.

_Absolute idiots. God, this is annoying. Argh…_


	2. Particle 01: A Monk and a Vampire

Particle 01: A Monk and a Vampire

There are several locations around the globe as we know it -- "Earth" -- that have been determined as points of activity.

One is probably well familiar with this concept. If something of a magical or fantastic nature is to happen to a perfectly normal-and-not-so-well-adjusted adolescent, said adolescent must be a resident of one of these places. Should the adolescent be born in another location, that adolescent will be drawn to an activity spot, be it by job change, the tragic death of parents to live with a relative, or the raw and pure draw of fate. Not to say that all of these are not fate in themselves, but the raw draw of fate is known to those who say "I must return to Tokyo, for there, my destiny awaits."[1] 

As is known, however, the future is not yet decided, and at the same time, though there is no such thing as 'fate', those who try to alter it often end up very dead. [2] It is only those who do not acknowledge its presence that save the day and stay alive. It is as if fate has a selective existence, or takes days off every now and then.

There are many arguments for this. A popular theory is that fate chooses its bitches carefully and makes their lives hell while leaving the fated heroes alone to be free from its bonds. The paradoxes and oxymorons get rather thick in this area, and logic does not like to stick around for very long to direct traffic. It prefers hanging out with the Laws of Explosions and Noise in the Vacuum of Space.

But the point that is trying to manifest itself through the prose elbows through all of the irrelevant information. Each nation has its activity spots. In the United States, they are California and New York City. Every single popular teenager movie takes place in California, for it is assumed that only in California can there be a high school with such a diverse student body as valley girls, stoners, jocks, goths, skaters, punks, ghetto homies, and a faculty heavily populated by the droids of teacher stereotype, none of whom are too bright. [3]

And to be a hero, one has to live in New York. For, surely, one fated to be a hero cannot manifest powers in, say, Amarillo, Texas [4], for example. The energies and setting aesthetics are merely not in place.

In Japan, the place is Tokyo. In the CLAMP universe, the place must include Tokyo Tower.

Now, let us assume that one is a vampire. One has no better place to go other than London, England. The wandering adventurer is guaranteed at least a peripheral or background role as a character in a movie, novel, or fanfiction. The proverbial lens that allows reality to look upon fiction is focused on two areas for vampire viewing pleasure: London and Romania. [5]

And where there are vampires, vampire hunters follow in order to keep a status as 'employed'.

--------------

[1] Technically, the individual using this quote was told by his mother to get his little uke ass back to Tokyo to fulfill his destiny. It is close enough.

[2] Very poetically, ironically, and tragically dead, with great abundances of black feathers and blood. Equal and opposite reaction. 

[3] Actually, all of these teachers have a social IQ of less than 50 and are proven to be either anal-retentive robots or dweebs that just need the help of their cool students to get phat and break out of their shells [I], man.

            [I] And not in the Utena sense. That would break the rule regarding the limit on mental function induction of a teenage movie being of a fourth grade picture book comprehension level or lower.

[4] A.K.A the center of absolute mental and cultural stagnation, or "hell on earth", as ex residents lovingly call it. Ironically the capitol of the Southern Baptist Biblebelt. Living there is painful.

[5] London has become the more popular location as of late, due to the fact that there are sex, drugs, neon lights, clubs, and indoor plumbing.

---------------------

Alucard sat down on the front steps of the Hellsing Manor and ripped the tab off of a blood packet with his jaws. He spat the plastic tab onto the grass and began to suck on the strawlike appendage of the bag. The blood was warm from keeping it in his breast pocket. It was not bodily heat that did this, for vampires have none, but the mere sandwich of heavy fabric.

The heat radiating from Sir Integral's rage probably did a good job in helping the blood reach temperatures almost tolerable for the vampire. Alucard grunted and pressed the bag to push the blood at the bottom of the bag into the straw. He hated cold, stagnated blood, but at the moment there was nothing else. All of the Hellsing soldiers had long since left after the fiasco involving the Judas in the Round Table, Walter was out of town, Seras needed blood as he did, and he did not fancy pinning Master to the ground at the time to suck on her neck. He would probably find it uncomfortable to walk for a week.

Ennui is known to be a calm before the storm in the NeXus, or at least a chance for the Creators to rewind and think of new ideas or study for their final exams. Like Akio, Alucard was bored. Unlike Akio, Alucard found it much more difficult to contain his ennui without doing something such as going down to the dungeons to shoot rats. Harassing Sir Integral was getting dangerous and somewhat old.

Alucard finished his blood and crumpled the bag in his fist.

Something was rustling in the bushes.

Alucard grinned, shoved the empty bag into his coat pocket, and walked over to the bush. He plunged his fist into the foliage and gripped.

Somebody screamed in pain and gripped at Alucard's wrist. He had clutched hair, tightly pulled into a low tail, but with loose tendrils sprouting from the forehead. It was familiar antigravity hair, as was the scream familiar. It was a voice belonging to no less than seven people whom Alucard knew.

"I-I-I-ITAIIII NA NO DAAAAAAA!! AAAACAAAADO!!"

"Well, greetings, Monk Man." Alucard hauled Chichiri out of the bushes and brought the unfortunate monk nose-to-nose with himself. "And what the hell are you doing here?"

"LET ME DOWN NO DA! OW!"

Alucard dropped Chichiri into an undignified heap onto the grass. Chichiri took a few deep breaths, pushed himself up with his staff, and dusted himself off. 

"That really hurt, you know, no da."

"My heart bleeds. What the hell are you doing here?"

"I really don't know no da." Chichiri continued to brush his shorts off, though they were already clean. He straightened his sash. "I hit a snarl somewhere back in Tortuga no da. I thought that you might be around no da."

Alucard sat down on the steps. "What did you think? There hasn't been any activity in this damn city lately. I've been sitting on my ass drinking packaged blood like a lap dog."

"Why haven't you left no da?"

"Master wants me to stick around on emergency watch."

"Emergency watch no da…" Chichiri sat down next to Alucard and nodded sagely. "You really are Integral's bitch no da. NO! IT'S A TERM OF ENDEARMENT NO DA!"

Alucard lowered the Jackal from Chichiri's forehead. He rested his wrist on his knee and allowed the gun to dangle loosely from his hand. There was no point to this. Integral would have his guts for garters if he shot the damn monk, and as much as he hated to admit it, the monk had his uses.

For example, right now.

"Let's get out of here."

"Huh?" Chichiri blinked. "To go where no da?"

"I don't give a fuck. Just get me out of this damn city."

"I don't think Sir Integral would like that very much, no da…"

"I think she would be happier not to see my face for a while." Alucard grinned to himself and stood up. "Let's go."

"…where no da?"

"Anywhere."

"Um… well…" Chichiri thought for a moment. "…have a fight?"

Alucard cocked the Jackal. Chichiri began to unfasten the clasp holding his cloak together busily. Alucard was not a good person to cross when he was bored, underfed, and defensive. _And probably undersexed no da_, Chichiri added to himself.

"Right no da." Chichiri flicked his cloak like a banner and spread it on the ground. "We'll just go wherever the wind takes us no da."

It was at this point that Chichiri remembered that he was a human, Alucard was a vampire, Alucard was cross, and Alucard had been drinking out of a blood packet, the latter of which was probably tepid and sub par to the Nosferatu. 

He suddenly became aware of just how warm his own blood was.

"…on second thought, I think I had an appo--EE!"

Alucard marched Chichiri onto the spread mantle with a gloved hand on the nape of the monk's neck and stood directly behind him. "Let's go, Monk Man," he half-hissed, half-growled. The growling half of things was guttural and impatient.

Chichiri swallowed, pulled his conical hat onto his head, and tapped the mantle three times with the butt of his staff. The rings hanging on the symmetrical heart design at the head of his staff jangled. 

The mantle glowed. Alucard and Chichiri began to sink into interspace.

_I am so, so fucked no da…_

---------

"You're crazy."

"Crazy, brilliant. The line between the two is so very vague and _undefined_, don't you agree?"

"But this is utterly stupid. There is no other way to put it."

"What if I said that I could pull it off well?"

Guru (or Master Mage, or Madoushi) Clef pulled his half-moon spectacles off of his nose and glared at Mana. He had been peacefully studying out of his venerable tomes of magic in Cephiro's library when this flat-eyed joker in a lab coat had shown up, smashed his palms into the table, and asked for the musicals section of the library before Clef had a chance to recover from the initial shock following the violent attack on the silence.

The stranger did not listen to the fact that Cephiro had no Earth musicals, for one…

"I would say that you are either an amazingly talented young man, or another delusional fanfiction writer with no idea as to what creates quality comedy." He narrowed his eyes. "Out-of-character outbursts, transvestitism, and fast automobiles in the hands of the wrong people do not make anything of any substance. They are cheap tricks to hide a lack of talent."

"I never said a thing about automobiles."

"Such as it _is_,"--Clef tapped his fingers on the table to punctuate his words--"you are doing something foolish and unoriginal."

"But I will _make_ it original. Don't you _see_?" Mana grabbed the front of Clef's robes and dragged the mage close to him. "I will put a fresh edge on the idea! I will be the genius that pulls it off so well and flawlessly--"

Clef bashed Mana in the head with his staff. Mana dropped the mage and held his head in surprise. The old man had some bite.

"Do not _ever_ touch me again without my permission, young man." Clef straightened out his robes, sat down, and replaced his glasses. He returned to his book. "You will receive no help from me, Mr. Scienziato," he said loftily. "Now please leave."

Mana continued rubbing his head gently and watched Clef for a moment. The mage turned a page in his book.

"You want to talk about extraneous and image creating? All right, old man."

Mana snatched Clef's glasses. Clef blinked in shock, then looked up Mana.

"HEY!"

"Glasses, indeed," Mana said, looking through the lenses and twisting the glasses around in his hands. "These lenses are just pure glass. You have perfect vision, old man. Are you not fulfilling the image stereotype of an arcane old mage in a library? Oh, forgive me." Mana turned the glasses so that he was staring at the semi-convex faces of the lenses. "You are a CLAMP character, after all."

Clef snatched his glasses and set them on the table. "And did you not notice that my robes are not my usual attire? It's artbook fanservice day."

"Oh, forgive me." Mana straightened and looked around the library. Books upon books lined every square inch of wall and shelf available, which constituted quite a bit of space. The room domed beyond three stories of floor.

Clef tapped his fingers on the table impatiently. Mana continued to look for around a minute from where he stood, neck craning in all directions.

"…does something _interest_ you?" Clef finally snapped through his teeth.

Mana had walked off toward a distant bookshelf. Clef sighed loudly and returned to his book. He faintly heard the rasp of rough library binding-against-binding across the room, the crackle of pages, and finally the muffled closing of a book. Footsteps followed.

Clef sighed loudly and shook his head, still staring at the pages of _The Practicality and Theories of Wiccan Magic_. He almost had a second heart attack when Mana slammed his hands into the desk once again and leaned over nose-to-nose with him.

"No Earth musicals, did you say?" Mana held up a blue, rough-textured book and shook it as if the binding was a reproaching finger. "How well do you know your own library?"

Clef was still recovering from the shock of _hearing_ Mana walk out the door, then having him slam his palms right under his nose. His breath finally unbound itself from his throat and released soundlessly. He collected himself.

"Sound projection manipulation; very impressive, young man. A lovely party trick," he said vaguely.

"No, it is the warping of magical energy in the library. But yes, I can do that." Mana cocked his head and smiled. "And do remember that in this nexus nothing is considered pure anymore. This Cephiran library is not purely Cephiran in content, by definition."

"…you don't say," Clef said blankly. "I must have missed something."

Mana pushed the book into one of his already-bulging coat pockets. "I will return it, old man. And I require the CD as well."

"CD," Clef repeated blankly.

"Why, look at this." Mana fished around underneath Clef's spread of notes and pulled a jewel case out from under the mess. He waved it in front of Clef's eyes. Clef blinked.

"Thank you for saving me the trouble," Mana continued. Clef finally blinked and returned to his senses, which themselves were returning to earth and regaining the flow of proverbial blood to relive numbness.

"Now, see here, young man…"

Clef opened his mouth and tried to think of something to say. The young man was supposed to have swept out dramatically or cut in to gloat on his wondrous and ingenious plan that no old coot could appreciate at this point, but the said young man merely stood patiently with his arms crossed. Clef waved his finger soundlessly, mouth open.

Mana made small motions to encourage Clef to speak. "…see here?" he said with raised eyebrows.

Clef snapped.

"Get out of my sight, you insolent little twat, and don't return!"

"Are you going to want your book back?"

"OUT! OUT!"

Clef stood up so suddenly that his rolling chair coasted into the wall and smashed his small hands into the table. He jabbed his finger toward the open door.

"LEAVE, YOU SORRY EXCUSE FOR A CREATOR! OUT! OR I WILL HAVE YOU A FROG IN A JAR BEFORE YOU CAN EVEN BLINK!"

"Frog in a jar. What were you saying about being unoriginal?"

Clef hurled a paperweight of the cosmos. Mana dodged and scrambled out the door.

-----------------------

"Hey, Monk."

"Um… yeah no da?"

"Where the hell are we?"

Chichiri looked around. He had chosen to merely allow interspace to pull them toward an area of high energy and impending doom and chaos, and they had emerged on the thatched roof of a mud house. The land all around the house was tilled.

It was also bloody _cold_. The roof was covered in ice and show, as was most of the land. The clouds had recently decided to dump liberal amounts of snow everywhere.

"…Alaska no da?" he said hopefully, trying to control his chattering teeth.

"Wrong." Alucard crossed his arms and stared at the fields. He was fortunate enough not to feel cold. He could sense changes in temperature, but his body did not register them as favorable or unfavorable.

Chichiri pulled his mantle more tightly around him and hugged his knees, sitting back on his heels to avoid sitting on the ice. His staff lay on the roof beside him.

"…um…"

"We're in _RUSSIA_," Alucard hissed. "Czarist Russia." 

"…how do you know no da?"

Alucard pointed across the field to a group of black-clad, red-sashed soldiers in knee-high leather boots and fur caps. "Do you see those soldiers over there?"

"Yeah no da."

"Don't they look just a little bit like soldiers from the Czar's army to you?"

Chichiri thought for a moment. "In theater setting and costume sense, yeah no da…"

Silence settled over the roof. Chichiri huddled closer into his mantle.

"And we can't leave?"

Chichiri slowly turned to look at Alucard and shook his head. His eyelashes were encrusted with frozen perspiration. "The interspace ways are jammed no da. Traffic has been called to a halt no da."

"Can't we just break a few little rules?" Alucard growled quietly.

Chichiri shook his head stiffly. "One more infraction and I get called to the Court. Might get my license revoked no da."

"Well, without a license you can still travel."

"If I get caught without a license _and _with a record…" Chichiri tried to think of exactly what would happen. "…daaa."

Alucard curled his lip. "You have no spine, Monk."

"Well, forgive me. Mr. No-Life-King. Unlike you, who was bestowed with power overriding all enemies, I was bestowed with the powerful and helpful abilities of a peripheral character. I'm not designed to save the world no da."

"Nobody's asking you to save the world. I'm just asking you to slip past some rent-a-mages to get the hell out of this godforsaken hellhole."

"It's not godforsaken no da." Chichiri nodded over his shoulder at a wooden Star of David on the chimney.  "It's Jewish no da."

--------

Mana slipped a package of joints to the warden in charge of the Historical Musicals and Dramas sector and patted her on the shoulder. "The other half if nobody leaves or enters without my permission for the next twenty-four hours."

The warden, who appeared about seventeen, pulled a joint out of the Ziploc bag and lit it with her Guns and Roses lighter. The dusty robe of her office was covered in band pins and safety pins, her nails were painted black, and her lip and eyebrow were pierced. She dragged on the joint and exhaled slowly.

"Thanks, man. I've needed this hit."

"And please, try not to get fired while on the job."

"Don't worry about it." The warden pulled her Mage Academy student ID out of her purse and pulled a roach clip off of the side. It made an effective way to keep the little buggers from getting lost. "Nobody ever patrols this sector. Don't care much about it."

"Yes, I can see that they don't," Mana said vaguely. 

The girl ignored him and pulled her headphones over her ears. She pressed a button on her CD player, and phenomenal, eardrum-bursting levels of Orgy filled the vacuum of interspace, which, unlike outer space, has been filtered and pumped with air for easy travel.

Mana rolled his eyes and faced the glowing Road behind the girl's plastic lawn chair. 

"Right." He moved his hands in an arcing, square-like shape. Corresponding lines of white-hot light glowed brighter than the softly glowing white Road behind it and carved themselves into a door.

_Tell me, how does it feel_

_When your heart grows cold?_

"Wonderful." Mana clambered into the road. "Mazeltov."


	3. Particle 02: Tradition Matchmaker Vodka

Particle 02: Tradition. Matchmaker. Vodka.

"Itsssss -- bloody cold no daaaaa…."

Alucard looked up from examining his gun for the countless-teenth time that evening and looked at Chichiri out of the corner of his eyes. "Cast some sort of a warmth barrier."

Chichiri was shaking uncontrollably underneath his cloak, which more and more was beginning to prove itself too thin for sub-arctic winters. The sun had set an hour ago. The hour was feeling plural.

Chichiri shrugged the mantle off of his right shoulder with several vibrating jerks and shakily reached for his staff, which was now covered in a layer of ice and frozen solid to the roof. He withdrew his hand back into his cloak, carefully scooted around so that he was facing the staff, and began to kick at it. He wished feverously that he did not wear Chinese slippers without socks. The cold was utterly torturous on his ankle and the top of his foot.

Not to mention that the slippers themselves were made of thin cloth, along with the rest of his clothes.

Chichiri glanced at Alucard's long, carmine coat enviously and continued to kick doggedly at his staff. If it came dislodged he might have a chance at warming himself in some sort of a bubble, and then getting some sleep. His body was demanding rest.

_Why didn't I think of this earlier, no da?_ he mentally hissed. _Chichiri, baka na no da. Learn to think with your head in reality for once no da._

Tasuki would be useful at a time like this. Not only did he keep his tessen around, but he always had plenty of sake or whatever local alcoholic drink in his hip flask. Though Chichiri tried to avoid alcohol, it had its warming qualities.

"Alcohol doesn't warm you at all, Monk. It places you under that delusion while making your body temperature drop."

Chichiri glared at Alucard out of the corner of his eyes and continued kicking. His breath was sending dense, pearly clouds into the frosty air.

_Damn vampire with damn telepathy no da._

The staff wasn't budging. Chichiri's leg had all of the strength of a rubber glove at the moment. Even when he was trying to hold it still, it shook uncontrollably, racking the knee. He quickly withdrew his leg back into his cloak and hugged himself as tightly as he could without bruising any internal organs.

"Um… Alucard…"

The Casull fired. Chichiri winced into his cloak, half expecting to feel his own head detach at the base of his neck. It didn't.

Chichiri cautiously looked over the rim of his cloak. There was a neat furrow through the ice on top of his staff, breaking it into gritty chunks. Alucard was once again concentrating on his gun.

"Thanks no da." 

Chichiri reached out of his cloak, shuddering at the touch of the frigid air on his wrist and hand, and snatched the staff to himself. Bits of ice scattered down his shirt. He winced and frantically brushed it off.

"Thanks. I'm going to make a warmth bubble, if that's all right with you no da. Do you need in?"

"I don't feel cold." Alucard looked down the barrel of the Casull. "Why didn't you do this earlier, Monk?"

_Shut up._ "Good night no da."

Chichiri awkwardly manipulated his staff with numbed hands so that the butt touched the frozen ground between his legs. He tapped the ground once. A warm, orange bubble crackled into being around him and glowed softly. 

_Aaaaaah, this is good no da._ The bubble was blissfully warm. Chichiri shrugged off his cloak and winced as blood began to flow back into the extremities of his limbs. The pain would follow shortly. He laid his staff across his crossed legs and looked at the refracted image of the outside world through the orange haze.

"Arctic stars are beautiful no da."

"Hm."

Chichiri sighed and curled up on his side in the bubble. The staff fell off his folded legs and rolled beside him, stopping on the axis of the head ornament and falling back flat. The ice was going to melt soon, he knew, and he would wake up in a puddle. He picked up the staff and tapped a one-way drainage hole on the downward slope of the roof. The water would escape. Heat would not.

"Night no da."

Alucard did not respond. Chichiri sighed and pulled his mantle over his shoulders. He fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.

----------

The exhausted are often blessed with dreamless sleep. Such was Chichiri's case. Such was a good case, for dreams in NeXus were often more exhausting than being awake.

The first thing that Chichiri heard since his own voice bidding Alucard good night the previous evening, therefore, startled him and alerted him beyond any doubt that he was no longer in the blissful void of Morpheus. There were times when he could have sworn that the void whispered that there was no spoon, but it was not one of those nights.

Something clanked onto the side of the roof. There was the slight pressure of somebody climbing up a ladder, then the momentary release, then somebody stepping lightly onto the surface.

Chichiri opened his eyes. He was lying side down on the damp thatch, still in his bubble of warmth. He sat up, grabbed his staff, and pulled his crumpled cloak back around his shoulders. 

Through the orange haze of the bubble he could make out the figure of a tall, slim boy carrying a violin – was it a violin? He couldn't tell – in his hand, bow threaded through his fingers and sticking out at an angle from the instrument. The boy looked surprised.

_Well, no shit no da, he walks onto a roof and there's a vampire and a man in a glowing bubble no da. I'm surprised the kid isn't pulling a shotgun out of nowhere to blow our heads off already no da._

Chichiri waved his hand. The bubble collapsed around him, allowing the gust of icy air that had been waiting patiently for him to remerge so as to commence its attack. Chichiri cursed at it under his breath.

"Um… Mazeltov no da."

--------------

_And who the hell is this kid?_ Alucard looked up at the newcomer through the clear space between the top of his sunglasses and the brim of his hat. The kid looked vaguely familiar, obviously a CLAMP issue, and appeared vaguely lost. There was a look about him that suggested a good brainwashing and implanting into odd clothes. Alucard suspected that the fiddle had been shoved into the kid's hands while he was still out of it.

_Fiddle -- waitaminute FIDDLE?!_

"Um… Mazeltov no da," Chichiri said weakly behind him.

The kid nodded. Alucard cursed vehemently under his breath. _Fiddle. Russia. Fiddle. Russia. Goddamit._

"Monk, do you watch many musicals?"

"Um… not many no da."

The fiddler nodded sagely to the pair, smiled, and lifted his instrument to his shoulder. He began to play a torturously familiar song. The notes carried clearly across the air.

There was a moment of silence.

Chichiri, it appeared, was still wondering why the kid was not asking any questions about the mysterious trespassers or the disappearing bubble of warmth. He stared at the kid for a moment, then began to work his mouth as if trying to form his words around an idea.

"What, Monk?" Alucard snapped. _This blows this blows oh man…_

Chichiri swallowed his words into formation. "…it's Kinomoto Touya from CCS no da. One of my seiyuu buddies no da!"

"C-C-what?"

"Cardcaptor Sakura. Sorry no da."

"Oh, yes, that," Alucard said dryly. He looked over the tops of his sunglasses at Chichiri. "Do you know exactly what sort of shit we've gotten ourselves into?"

"That one was also on the tip of my tongue no da."

"Familiar with a musical entitled _Fiddler on the Roof_?"

The Fiddler continued to play the slow, almost mournful tune. Chichiri thought for a moment.

"Oh yeah. I had a feeling that was what this was no da."

"And I suppose you liked it, did you?"

"I thought it was sweet. I cried my eyes out no da."

"What a surprise." Alucard glared at the Fiddler's back. Almost anything that made emotional Mr. Monk cry was something that would make Alucard retch. 

"So this kid's not the Fiddler, is he?"

"Apparently, he is now, no da."

"But I mean as you know him."

"No, no da."

"I see." Alucard thought for a moment. There was one person he knew insane and annoying enough to pull this sort of stunt out of nowhere--with the power to do so--, and he did not want to deal with him at the moment. He had been wary of the psycho ever since he had asked Alucard to 'say something dirty' into a high-end Dictaphone. 

_They're going to start singing soon. I think I will blow my eardrums out with Jackal._

The Fiddler was still playing, seemingly oblivious to the increasingly irritated Nosferatu with two very large handguns at his feet. Alucard glared up at the Fiddler before returning to his brooding.

"This would be a lovely time to get the fuck out of here, Monk."

"The ban's still up no da."

Alucard opened his mouth to hiss something incoherent but roughly translating to 'You will get me the HELL out of here, MONK MAN, or I will make your innards come out your mouth.'

He was cut off before the implication of 'HELL' escaped.

"A fiddler on the roof. Sounds crazy, nah?" a deep voice said below on the frozen ground.

Alucard twitched and pulled his hat low over his eyes.

"It's Jet! Hey, it's Jet no da! Jet's Tevye no da!"

"Good for Jet," Alucard said acidly. He leaned back against the chimney, crossed one leg over his knee, and pulled his hat lower. Quite frankly, this was beginning to give him the creeps.

"Faye! Oh, Faye no da! Faye must be Golde! …."

-------------

There was a rousing rendition of "Tradition" involving a full cast of assorted characters. 

There was some dialogue that Alucard missed and Chichiri followed with rapt attention.

Chichiri and Alucard were still sitting on the roof waiting for something to happen. Chichiri knew that if this followed the play, the girls would sing "Matchmaker" soon. He wanted to see which girl played which character, and so match up which males played their love interests.

Alucard didn't give a damn and just wanted to leave.

"You are absolutely no fun no da," Chichiri said, pacing and spinning around the roof as if performing "Tradition". From Alucard's viewpoint, the small, thin, Chinese monk looked utterly ridiculous dancing like a Jewish Russian man.

"This pisses me off."

"Oh, me too no da." Chichiri stopped with his arms up in the air. He had been attempting the drunk Tevye dance. "The, ahem, Creator of this little crossover is using absolutely no originality whatsoever. He or she is just sticking random characters into the roles of the play and making them recite lines no da. But I like the play no da."

"That is just what pisses me off. I think I know who's doing this, and he is notorious for fucking things up even worse than one could possibly imagine. This is far too tame."

Faye Valentine, wearing a Russian peasant dress, walked into the house and slammed the screen door. Chichiri continued to watch Alucard.

"Maybe it'll get worse no da."

"I hope so. Anything is better than this shit."

"Where is your sense of adventure no da?"

Alucard frowned and clenched the handles of his guns. Oh, it would be lovely to sate his bloodlust on the miserable people of this town and end all of the damn singing, but a feeling deep in his gut told him that it would not be wise to do so.

At the moment, only his own influence, and not even Integral, could make him stop from ripping the larynx of every goddamned performer--

The door slammed again. Faye marched out to the fields in a huff.

"OH! OH! MATCHMAKER!" Chichiri walked over to the edge of the roof with his staff tucked under his arm. He stepped into space and swung as if on a fulcrum to hang upside down and look into a window, suspended by his magic.

Alucard grunted. It was better than watching Jet Black sing "If I Were a Rich Man" and flail his arms like a drunk Russian man. The very thought made him want to weep for the integrity of fanfiction at large.

He also didn't want to hear Faye and Jet sing "Do You Love Me"…

The girls below began to sing. Their voices were beautiful, Alucard had to admit, but the song was too damn annoying to bear. He pulled a CD player out of an interspace pocket, pulled the headphones apart to place them on his ears and behind his neck, and pressed play.

The monophonic blasting of Cradle of Filth drowned out the innocent lament for marriage.

"Shhhh no da."

Alucard flicked Chichiri off. Chichiri did not see him.

"Ooh, I think Kanzaki Hitomi is Tzeitel no da."

"Excellent. Her dumbass boyfriend will be Motel. I need to pick some bones with him anyway."

Alucard continued to half-listen to Chichiri, and Chichiri only, through telepathy. The monk happily hummed to himself with the music, swaying back and forth in midair like a low-key pendulum attached at the hip. He was genuinely enjoying himself.

Alucard began to wonder just how closely monkhood and masochism were interlinked.

"Oh, OH!"

"Having an orgasm down there, Monk?"

"Himemiya Anthy is Hodel no da!"

Alucard thought for a moment. Anthy, if he recalled correctly, was a very weak-willed and soft-spoken girl. Hodel, from what he remembered from the musical, was very strong-willed and outspoken.

_Either the bastard is going to pull an OOC, or there are going to be adaptations…_

"All right, Monk. Before you start screaming and alerting the entire damn town, who's the third girl wasshername?"

"Chava. It's Nekoi Yuzuriha, no da."

Alucard almost choked on his own saliva. Yuzuriha, the ultimate airhead, was not much of a bookworm, and if this was canon paring based that hulking, tree-hugging pacifist would be the Russian soldier guy.

He also remembered that the Russians had to dance in the bar scene. He pulled his hat even lower. The brim was now touching the bridge of his nose.

"Oh, so Fyedka is going to be one of your seiyuu buddies no da!"

"Seiyuu _complexes_, only movie version, and the TV/manga version of himself annoys me. Damn tree-hugging hippie."

"You are in a sour mood today no da."

Alucard grunted. Chichiri listened for a while longer, tapping his foot in midair so that his toe kept flashing over the side of the roof.

"Is it over?" Alucard called over his blasting earphones.

"Um… hold on … yes, now it is no da."

Chichiri swung back up onto the roof as if rotating on a wheel attached to the soles of his shoes, still facing outward. He took one backwards step onto the thatch before pivoting theatrically.

Alucard groaned to himself. This was just too damn much.

"Can we leave, please?" he growled quietly.

"Nope! Sorry no da!"

"Look, it looks like this is just going to be the musical with characters as actors. Can't you just project that mentally or something?"

"We can't leave, remember no da?"

"Oh, yes, I forgot." Alucard huddled into his coat lapels, which were sticking up. "You spineless cur," he muttered.

-------------

_The man wants my milk cow so badly that he buys me drinks._

Jet, or Tevye as he now mentally referred to himself, warily watched Lazar Wolf pour vodka into his wooden flagon. They were sitting at a small side table at Mordcha's inn, an out-of-the-way corner even darker than the rest of the bar. The rest of the town's men were sitting at the bar or talking to one another. Their drunk exclamations and babble were getting loud.

"Tevye? Do you listen to me, friend?"

Jet returned his attention to the man in front of him. Lazar was famous for having a smooth, soothing voice and a beautiful face, far too beautiful for a butcher to have. It was a wonder that his long hair did not catch fire daily.

"I hear you. I know what you want, and I say no."

"…" Lazar took a sip of his drink. "But you have not even heard my proposition."

"I don't need to hear it. I know what you want."

"But you have five, Tevye. You cannot keep them all to yourself."

_As if you care, Al--Al?_ Tevye blinked. _Why do I want to call this man Allen? Tis Lazar Wolf, the butcher! Gods, man, you've had too many drinks. I've never heard the name Allen. Tis't even kosher._

_…gods? Gods? I swear as a pagan? What is wrong with me?_

Jet mentally begged forgiveness from God and took a deep drink of vodka. The alcohol ran down his chin and shirt, collecting in his beard. He set the flagon back on the table and pointed at Lazar with his living hand.

"Look, you. The answer is no. I know your type." –for a split second, Jet numbly noticed two oddly dressed strangers at the bar, a tall, lithe man in red and a shorter man dressed like one of those Orientals. _Who are those men?_ –"First you will want one, then two."

"Two?" Alle_—LAZAR LAZAR LAZAR_ started to laugh. "Tevye, what sort of a man do you take me for?"

Jet shook his head and took a deep drink. 

"…we are talking about the same thing, aren't we?"

"Yes." Jet looked up at Lazar and pointed, this time with his prosthetic hook. It was a breach of educate he would never violate under normal circumstances. "You want to buy my milk cow."

Lazar stared at Jet for a moment. Jet allowed his arm to drop heavily and returned to his flagon. _Now let the man leave me in peace._

Lazar started laughing.

Jet looked up angrily. What was this man's problem?

"No, Tevye, Tevye, it's your daughter, Tzeitel. I want to marry her."

"…marry?" Jet repeated blankly.

"I'm a very lonely man," Lazar continued, pouring Jet more vodka. Jet watched the liquid splash into the flagon hollowly.

"…marry, my daughter Tzeitel."

"SHE LOVES VA--MOTEL NO DA!" 

Both Lazar and Jet looked up sharply at the bar. The tall man in red was covering the Chinese man's mouth forcefully and hissing in his ear. Mordcha (or Shinbo Hiroshi), who was tending the bar at the time, watched them with interest while swilling a flagon with a rag that looked as though it would do a better job dirtying the mug than cleaning it.

Sumomo, sitting on Shinbo's shoulder and dressed in a heavy skirt and a head kerchief, tilted her head and watched the newcomers with interest.

"…odd, we never have outsiders in Anatevka."

"I do not like the look of them, myself." Lazar placed his hands on his hips and twisted his waist for a better view. "They are definitely gentile, rough looking. If they come with trouble from the Czar, I will have a word with them myself."

"It does not bode well to mess with the Czar's army." Jet took another deep drink. "Keep your nose out of trouble and trouble will keep its nose… I forgot the saying." Jet waved his arms down sharply to end the point. "Don't go biting off more than you can chew.

Something fundamental rooted in their most instinctive guts told them that their entire lives, their entire existences, they both had been poking their noses into trouble or having trouble chase them. Jet furrowed his eyebrows and noted a confused expression on Lazar's face, as if he was trying to remember something long past.

_That is not right. We live quiet lives here in Anatevka, kosher lives. We do not chase trouble. Tradition, man! Tradition!_

"…I say yes," Jet said in attempt to break the tension. He numbly realized that he had just committed his daughter to a man and determined the course of the rest of her life.

Lazar blinked out of his daze and grinned. 

"You truly mean it, Tevye?"

"I mean it! We shall be related!" Jet numbly clanked flagons with Lazar and took a deep, confirmative drink. He needed to drown his wits. Badly.

A deep, pressing part of Jet's mind was trying to conflict with his closed, tradition-orientated mentality. The force was far more cynical, worldly, and harsh. Secular, as well, which scared him.

The voice was sending a telegraph to his gut that roughly translated to: _This is wrong. This is not right. This is not you, man. Get out of it._

Jet drank the rest of his vodka in one gulp and stood up. "TO LIFE!" he roared, trying his hardest to silence his inner voice, or at least until he could drown it out.

"To life!" Lazar responded, standing to clank flagons with Jet.

Jet knew that he was going to sing, perfectly and fluently as if he were talking. He felt the inner voice turn its back, shake its head, and hide its eyes in utter shame.

"More vodka!" he yelled. He wanted the voice GONE.

But it wouldn't leave. Jet Black wanted to kill Tevye as badly as Tevye wanted to kill Jet Black.

------------------------------

In a similar situation, Constable Wolfwood was wondering just why the hell his gut was telling him that he was about to make a dire, dire mistake.

The gut was also telling him to cut line and run away from this town and his unit, now, and that he looked utterly ridiculous in a fur cap.

Wolfwood and his unit of four soldiers were waiting in the most secluded corner of the bar, being served fearfully by Mordcha and avoided by the Jews. It was a normal situation that gave the soldiers the chance to make their jokes and talk as crudely as they wished. Much of their language would curdle the ears of the Jews, they said, but Wolfwood had a feeling that any humans of any denomination short of saints would have their own fair usage of crude language.

Fyedka, as usual, was buried in one of his books. He made an odd picture. Physically, he was one of the largest men Wolfwood had ever seen, battle scared and muscle-bound, but he always had a book with him as if he were some pale-faced student from the cities. 

_He is such a gentle soul_, Wolfwood thought into his flagon. The flagon usually provided wonderful insight, but it was not responding this evening. _I wonder once again why he joined our ranks._

_Because he's damn tough and a hardass when he needs to be_, he answered himself. _Calm yourself and stop thinking so much. You have a job to do._

Wolfwood took a deep drink. The vodka was weak this evening.

Sasha, as usual, was leading the unit in crude jokes. Wolfwood watched him with mild distaste. For reasons he did not know, his gut kept wanting to attach the name 'Saionji Kyouichi' to Sasha when he knew damn well that he had never met a man by that name.

It was the same situation with the other soldiers. Fyedka kept getting the odd name Kusanagi Shiyuu. Kojirou… Kojirou rocket-related something. Monou Fuuma.

Wolfwood shook his head to clear it. He also wanted to call himself some nonsense such as Nicholas D. Wolfwood, which sounded like Northern European gibberish to his ear.

"Sasha, this vodka taste funny to you?" he asked.

Sasha looked toward Wolfwood from telling his joke to his comrades and took a small sip of the wine. "Weak as piss, sir. Other than that, fine."

"Wine talking to you, sir?" Kojirou asked.

_He's not Kojirou_, his mind rebelled. He took a small sip. "Maybe."

"Well, a hardened soldier like yourself shouldn't respond bad to this ditchwater. Maybe you're getting a fever."

"Or the Jews stuck some mushrooms in here."

"Sasha, that will do," Wolfwood snapped. He turned to Kojirou. "I am not ill, soldier. Your concern is appreciated."

"SHE LOVES VA--MOTEL NO DA!"

The soldiers looked up at the bar. One of the strangers – the Chinese man – was being forcefully silenced by the man in red. The Jews were staring.

"Newcomers are making the Jews nervous," Fyedka muttered into his book.

"I do not like their presence," Wolfwood said quietly. "Something about them bothers me. Nobody ever visits Anatevka unless on the Czar's business, and even then…"

"Why not, sir?"

"Think, man!" Sasha hit Kojirou across the head. "Why would anybody visit this little godforsaken strip of land unless they had to! Hell, if I had the chance I'd be marchin' out of here this very second, and never look back!"

Wolfwood furrowed his eyebrows and took a deep drink. For reasons he could not explain, he was more inclined to trust the strangers than his own men. There was a familiarity he could not explain. The Constable did not believe in reincarnation, as it was not astern Orthodox by any means, but there was the possibility of, say, amnesia…

Wolfwood took a deeper drink. Voices were more tolerable when one was drunk. One at least knew that they probably weren't real.

"TO LIFE!" somebody roared.

Wolfwood looked across the bar out of the corners of his eyes. A scruffy, one-armed man – the dairyman, if he remembered correctly – had stood up with his flagon raised. _Drunk as a post._

Lazar Wolf stood up and joined him. The Jews looked up in interest.

"Oh, here it goes."

"Sasha, silence." Wolfwood stood up. "I am going to have a word with the strangers and see if their travel papers are all in order. Be prepared to back me up if I signal."

Fyedka did not respond behind his book, but Wolfwood knew that he was always listening. Sasha waved his hand impatiently, watching the drunks with the other two soldiers.

Wolfwood sighed, took the last drink of his flagon to steady himself, and stood up.

-------------

"Ano… Alucard… that soldier guy is coming no da…"

Alucard looked up from nearly strangling Chichiri with the monk's own prayer beads. He grinned.

"Well, the Catholic gunman priest…"


	4. Particle 03: Firecracker Mako Detector H...

**Particle 03: Firecracker Mako Detector Homoerotica**

Perchick stared at her reflection in the dingy mirror, one of the few comforts that Reb Tevye and his family could afford to give her to furnish her attic room during her short stay. It was a small sign of the family's inherent kindness, no matter how gruff Tevye and Golde seemed on the outside.

This was one of the few chances that Perchick had to breathe without binding her chest flat. She sighed and stretched her linked hands above her head. Finally, freedom. Her chest was sore. Cursed be the hormones that gave her such well-endowment so early on in life.

Perchick dropped her arms and ran her fingers through her short-cropped hair. Reb Tevye had gone off to the local inn to meet a gentleman on business, the girls were taking a short bit of time to themselves, and Golde was elsewhere unknown at the moment. This would be a good chance to talk to Hodel alone, without Golde breathing down her neck. She always feared that Golde could see straight through her gender-masking disguise. 

The price for any homoerotica – 'sodomy' – in Anatevka was surely death.

Oddly, and yet confusing to Perchick, there was a small flame inside her that promised an almost inherent courage and boldness she could not recall ever having during the course of her life. It was a flame that also strongly disagreed with the Communist doctrine she so loved, telling her that above all things, humans were to be free from all bounds of government and society. The part of the flame that always remained consistent was the longing for change and open-mindedness among all.

It was the sort of conflict she would drown out with vodka, had she the energy to walk all the way to the inn. Even so, she would run into Reb Tevye for sure, and the man was none too fond of her. He found her to be a force of unsettlement.

Perchick sighed and flopped stomach-down onto her bed. She dug a book out from under her pillow and opened to a marked page, not even bothering to really read the words. It was the Communist Manifesto; she had memorized it back-to-front. 

_I wonder if tonight is the night that I should try to introduce the girls to the Manifesto_, she thought, flipping a page without even reading the faded print. _The parents are not around so as to object. The poor things, live such a sheltered life. I hope that all of them are happy with this…_

Perchick sighed and focused on the words.

------

_I'll go my way. No turning back. Before the time comes_

_For each of us to choose a different path_

_I'll release the so precious, oh so precious___

_Memories._

_Take my revolution.  Let's go on with our lives._

_Reality approaches now, frantically._

_What I want is to find my place in life and my self-worth,_

_Taking who I've been up until today..._

_...and heroically strip until bare,_

_Like the roses whirling in freedom._

_But even if the two of us should be separated,_

_I will change the world._

_------_

_"……………………"_

Perchick looked up from the book and blinked several times. No, this wasn't the text, wasn't it at all. How did—she checked the cover, yes, "The Communist Manifesto"—how did—what the—

Perchick turned the page with a badly shaking hand, almost yanking it free of the binding. The text on the next page was as she remembered it. She flipped back to the previous page and took a deep breath.

The text was as she remembered it.

Perchick blinked and dropped the book onto her lap heavily. She sighed in relief. _I'm not crazy I'm not crazy I'm not crazy thank God…_

The proverbial inner flame was taking on a rosy hue.

Perchick stared at the thatched ceiling in a daze. The candle on her bedside table was casting lights in muted oranges. The ceiling was blurring.

Perchick's lips moved subconsciously. A whisper…

"But even if the two of us are separated, I promise you

I will change the world…"

Perchick sat bolt upright, gasping. 

The flame guttered.

"….AAAAAH!"

Perchick swung off of the bed, kicked the trapdoor down, and yanked the holding chord off of the ladder. The ladder unfolded and hit the ground below with a soft thud.

"Perchick?" Tzeitel called from below. "Is that—"

Perchick was already three fourths of the way down the ladder. She landed heavily on the ground and looked around the kitchen frantically. Ground—solid, sink—there, table—there, moon—rising, sun—setting, snow—covering, orientation—good. Good. Anatevka. Russia. 

Tzeitel and Motel, or one might say, Hitomi and Van, were sitting at the table staring with mild confusion.

"Perchick, is something wrong?"

"Nothing—" _OH SHIT_. Perchick looked down. She had not bound her chest. The curves of her breasts were clearly visible through her nightshirt.

"Ah—I, ah, just thought I heard something," she muttered, scrambling for the ladder. She climbed back up so quickly that her foot slipped twice.

-------------------------

"Wait!" Hitomi stood up. "Perchick—"

There was scrambling upstairs. Hitomi looked at Motel, then stood up and walked over to the ladder. She craned her neck to look up into the attic, trying to sense what was happening beyond the square-view provided by the hole.

"Perchick, is something wrong?"

"Nothing!" 

"For goodness's sake…" Hitomi placed her hands on her hips and walked back to the table. Motel looked confused.

"Didn't Perchick look a little…" He moved his hands in a cupping motion in front of his chest. "…round?"

"What are you talking about?" Hitomi swept her skirts out from under her and sat down. "I didn't see a thing."

"…he's a little odd."

"Very. Extremely. Did you want some cake? I made it myself."

"No, I mean… doesn't he seem a little…" Motel moved his hands as if trying to clutch words. "…feminine?"

"Well… yeah, his voice and his face and his shoulders and his hips and waist and his wrists, but other than that…"

Motel thought for a moment. "…oh, just other than all of that."

"Don't be silly, Motel. Perchick is a man. How else would he be able to attend a big university?"

As the pattern has been well established already, Hitomi's sharp intuition was conflicting sharply with Tzeitel's sharp sensory-only perspective on things, which was producing quite a deal of second-guessing and doubt.

Hitomi was used to that. Tzeitel was not.

Hitomi chewed on a hangnail thoughtfully. "…now that you mention it…"

"Should we tell your father?"

"No, absolutely not. He'll kill poor Perchick, and if he doesn't believe us he'll forbid you to ever see me again."

"Fine…" Motel placed his head on his hand and smiled. "Did you say something about cake?"

Something banged upstairs.

Hitomi and Van—Motel—looked up at the trapdoor.

The ladder was gone.

------------------

Utena lowered the ladder out the open window until it rested in the thick bank of snow below. The sky was vivid, dark blue, sharply contrasting with the white snow. The frigid arctic wind was blowing ice into her face. 

Utena shuddered and backed out onto the ladder. The ladder was unsteady and sliding back and forth across the icy windowsill, sometimes lifting free for brief moments before slapping back down. She began to climb down quickly, focusing her weight on a balanced point on each rung.

She made it halfway down before the ladder fell over.

Utena jumped to the ground safely as the ladder crashed on its side. She collected the ladder, folded it up, and set it in a sheltered area under the house. She had to remember to find it before Reb Tevye or Golde did.

_Damn it, I left the trapdoor open!_

Utena cursed and hugged herself, stamping snow out of her boots. There was nothing to be done now. She would just have to explain when she returned.

Right now, she needed a drink. Badly.

---------------------

_Everything is moving into place, finally. A little slow on development this time, but it moves into place. Finally._

_Let's deviate a little…_

----------------------

A gun went off.

Constable Wolfwood winced and felt the top of his head. His hat had been blown off. The bullet had grazed his scalp. The blood was already making his hair tacky.

Alucard grinned and gestured sideways with the Casull. "That is my right to travel without papers, Priest. Now, I suggest that you move aside. Tell your men not to even bother with their weapons. I overpower them all. Not that I would mind, because this little hole of a town is rather boring. A little excitement may balance out something in the cosmic fabric."

Wolfwood watched Alucard carefully before putting his hands on top of his head and moving aside. His men, who had stood defensively at the first shot, did the same.

"Priest? What do you mean?"

"You don't remember, do you?" Alucard curled his lip. "Brainwashed, all of you." He raised his voice to the utterly silent and shocked bar. "Don't any of you remember who you are?"

"We're men under god!" one of them shouted. "And we won't be terrorized by you!"

"Then remain what you are right now. I hold ties with none of you, though I know most of you by name. It's more than you know about your true selves at the moment." Alucard wrapped his hand around the back of Chichiri's neck and pulled him onto his feet.

The monk was silently praying that chaos not break out, but things were moving far past the point of no return back to tranquility. Or, at least, tranquility it its loose NeXus meaning.

"I believe you have an annoying musical number to sing." Alucard backed toward the rear entrance with Chichiri in tow. "We are leaving. Constable," Alucard nodded to Wolfwood. "I would not advise chasing me, for your own sake and the sake of your men."

Alucard backed out the door. A gust of snowy air invaded the bar before the door flapped closed.

Silence.

It is a well-known fact that drunk men, agitation, guns, and small towns with many dark rooftops and doorways do not mix without some sort of inevitable chaos.

It does not take stoichiometry to figure the next result…

------------------------------

Utena was a block away from the bar when she heard the shot.

_What in the hell?!_

Utena centered her weight on the icy street and ran toward the bar. Though the perfect cocktail of alcohol and guns was there, never had she heard of anybody shooting another in Anatevka while in the bar. That was something that happened back in the city, not here.

Maybe these people weren't as clean-cut as she thought they were.

_Well, of course, backwater or no, they're humans._ She flattened herself to the side of the inn and looked over her shoulder into the window. _They—_

Something dark jumped onto the roof across the alley from the bar, dragging with it what appeared to be a hostage holding a staff. She vaguely noticed that the hostage had a conical, Chinese-looking hat hanging off of a strap around its neck.

Utena gaped. Before she had a chance to react, the figure had jumped to another roof.

The door also slammed right into her face.

Approximately one-fourth of the entire male population of Anatevka poured out of the door, shouting oaths, some brandishing knives or staves. There was a stampede of thick, muddied boots scraping and slamming across the slushy ice of the doorway. 

The door closed for a moment. Utena slipped out of harm's way and rubbed either cheek. While one had been directly smashed by the door, the other had been pressed into the wall until she feared that her jaw would snap inward.

The door opened again. Reb Tevye and Lazar Wolf staggered onto the inn patio, the latter brandishing a butcher knife he always kept in his apron pocket. The man seldom removed his bloodied apron until he fell into bed at night. Tonight was no acceptation, though he was asking for a hand in marriage.

Utena blinked. A gut instinct told her for some reason that Lazar had a very natural tendency to take great pride in cleanliness and appearance. 

"Perchick!" Tevye motioned violently in the general direction of his house. "Go back to the house, boy! This is no place for you!"

"Who was that man? Was somebody kidnapped?"

"It was a gentile, a foreigner of these parts," Lazar said, looking dramatically across the moonlit rooftops. The moonlight always seemed to find a perfect and flattering way to fall across his face and highlight his blue eyes. It did not seem consistent with the archetype for a butcher. Butchers looked unflattering in any lighting situation. They were all also obligatorily red-faced, hairy, and overweight, but Lazar was lithe and pale. Utterly smooth-shaven, also, which as far as Utena remembered was a sin to the Jews.

He was quite beautiful.

_Don't think about that now, girl…_

"Perchick! Did you hear me, boy?! Go home!"

Utena bowed clumsily to Tevye and backed off toward the street. "Yessir, begging your pardon for intruding; I'll just go…"

"GO!"

Tevye and Lazar ran after the drunken mob, or rather, to fortify its ranks. Utena watched to see if they would even look back. When they did not, she straightened and took an alternate path down a back alley.

-----------------

"So you just stumbled upon this excuse for a community while searching for mako."

"That's the shape of it."

"…mako."

"It's an urban area with no technological advancement to supply the reactors to suck the mako dry, if you follow me."

"Do I." Alucard tapped the top of the Jackal against the edge of the roof over his head. The building adjacent to their rooftop was slightly taller. "So you're looking for mako in a butcher shop?"

"Where there is a great deal of loss of life, there is a great deal of spirits being released back to the earth."

"And therefore… more mako."

"People are also dying in this town in great numbers. Russia as well. War, disease, cold, vodka, lovers' suicides. All very fashionable."

"Disease is fashionable nowadays no da?"

"Biological warfare is the new stuff, Mr. Monk."

"You're a smarmy bastard." Alucard looked over the top of his sunglasses at the man crouching across from him. "Do you have a name, former Dragon of Earth?"

The man smiled in a way that marked him as a natural salesman. "You are a smart one. Kigai Yuuto at your service, Dragon of Earth once reincarnated, thrice if you count my three deaths in various versions."

"You serve nobody but yourself. And before you make any remarks, I remain in the service of humans. I'm not a freelance with no honor."

"And we all applaud you, Master Alucard."

"And now you're working for Shinra no da."

"Not so much working as offering my services for a short period of time."

Chichiri narrowed his eyes. "You're a mercenary no da."

Yuuto smiled with closed eyes. He appeared almost cheerful. "Now, don't say it as if it's such a bad thing. I work where I'm needed. Besides, I have a good running record with messing up the balance of the earth."

"No, wrong no da. You're supposed to be in favor of the earth's natural energy over human industrialization no da. So you're being destructive in a paradoxical way no da."

"But I never really cared about the earth, you see." Yuuto raised his hands and made smooth motions in front of his chest with arced fingers. A sphere of water formed and began to fluctuate, first a perfect sphere, then an ellipse, then almost a D-orbital, always moving and flowing. "You should understand when I say that just go with the flow. Go where the action is. You, after all, are a spirit of water like myself."

"There are multiple ways to interpret the nature of water no da." Chichiri poked the moving water. "That still makes the comment you had about destroying the earth paradoxical and irrelevant—wait…"

Chichiri looked up into his brain and moved his lips, trying to work out the logic of what he had just said about what Yuuto had said a while ago. 

The sound of running footsteps coming down the alley stopped at the door of the butcher shop. Yuuto dissipated the ball of water with an outward flick of his wrists as the three looked down at the street in amusement. The main group had passed the rooftop several minutes ago, this being after Alucard and Chichiri had found Yuuto crouching and watching with deceptively cheerful amusement.

"Well, well, what have we here?" said Yuuto. "It's Allen Crusade Schezar VIII and Jet Black, also players on this small illusionary stage." He sat back on his heels and thought for a moment. "I do hope they don't go inside."

Chichiri looked up. "…why?" he asked cautiously, dreading and already knowing the nature of the answer. "What did you do no da?"

"Oh, nothing, just a little bit of site evaluation…"

"Site evaluation my ass no da."

"I'd rather not, though from this angle it looks as though it's doing pretty well for itself. I'd give it a seven on the fangirl-scale-of-approval."

"And why would you know how to work the fangirl-scale-of-approval no da?"

"I'm really a woman." Yuuto smiled at Chichiri's steadily growing expression of surprise. "Just joking."

"In any case, could we please not talk about my ass no da?"

"And why not? It appears to be in rather good shape."

Chichiri edged his backside toward the wall of the adjacent building, watching Yuuto warily. Yuuto started to laugh.

"HEY!!" Allen yelled from within his shop. "What the hell is this?!"

"Oh dear…" Yuuto returned his attention to the alley below, where Jet was standing a drunken guard of sorts that involved a lot of paranoid eye-shifting and hugging his arms against the cold. "I should not have left that down there…"

"Um… I just noticed something no da…"

"What?"

"Where's Alucard no da?"

------------------------

Allen knelt down in front of the odd contraption hammered into the icy dirt floor of his butchery shop. Something about its design appealed to his subconscious awareness designated to recognizing technology—of which he had seen a fair amount in his inter-Road travels—but the conscious of the rural and uneducated Lazar Wolf was registering the item as some sort of odd slicing device.

The mixed conclusion, therefore, involved the concept of a clock counting down to a very theatrical and fiery explosion and people being cut into strips as the result.

"TEVYE!"

Tevye scrambled and slipped across the icy doorway and stopped beside Allen. Allen leaned away from the device out of fear that it would explode in his face at any second.

"What is this?"

"Don't know. Some sort of a bomb."

"Bomb? What the hell is a bomb?"

Tevye thought about this for a moment. "Ever heard of Chinese firecrackers? Light them, they explode and make a huge ruckus? That's like a bomb."

"You're knowledgeable all of a sudden."

"I believe it was God who spoke to me."

Tevye seemed to be in conflict about the origin of the idea as well. Allen stared at him for a second before returning his attention to the 'bomb'.

"…the Chinaman. This must be one of his firecrackers. Damn." Allen stood up. "Why does he want to firecracker my business? I've done nothing to the man."

"Pagans are odd folk. Savages. Like to make human sacrifices."

"Are you suggesting that I am a human sacrifice?"

Tevye didn't respond. Allen looked over his shoulder. The old man was in some sort of an internal moral conflict—unknown to Allen, the worldly intellect of Jet versus the closed mentality of Tevye—that was unwarranted. There were men who became philosophers when they were drunk, and men who became mere dancers and singers. Tevye was one of the latter. Jet was one of the former.

The end result was not pretty.

"…wedding!" 

"Pardon?"

Tevye stumbled forward and draped his arm around Allen, effectively making the smaller man's knees buckle. Allen stumbled a few steps into Tevye. 

"Let's have the wedding now! Tonight!"

"It… sounds like a novel idea, Reb Tevye, but there is this pressing issue of the Chinaman and the firecracker…"

"Aawww, live and let live."

"The _firecracker_…"

"We'll just chuck it out into some field and let it explode where nobody'll be the wiser. The mob'll never catch him. We'll never catch the mob, therefore we'll never catch him. Makes sense, no?"

"Um…" Allen eyed the 'firecracker' at his feet warily and noted that there was a blinking green light on one side of its casing. The subconscious gears of his brain were trying to send some sort of a message through the haze of amnesia and vodka.

"…what about… guests? Preparations? The rabbi, the tent?"

"We'll get it all ready!" Tevye patted Allen's arm heavily with his good hand and pointed at the 'firecracker' with his hook. "What's to loose, nah? A bunch of dead animals on the walls and some knives."

"Livestock, meat. I liked the idea about chucking it into a field better."

"Yeah, and with God's good fortunes you'll kill some cows and have some meat for tomorrow, nah? Make some money for your new bride, wedding feast…"

Allen thought about this for a moment.

"How old is Tzeitel again?"

"Um… fifteen, eighteen, can't remember."

"Wedding tonight…"

Wedding. Tonight. Wedding. Night. Wedding night. The reasoning was perfectly valid with the reinforcement of vodka and libido. It made perfect sense. It made perfect sense to both Allen and Lazar, so there was at least no internal conflict on a more-than-exclusively-internal level.

Maybe Reb Tevye had a head on his shoulders after all. But why would he think that way involving his own daughter?

Did Tevye always act like a fool when he was drunk? Did Tevye ever get drunk? Was Tevye named Tevye? Did he ever have a blasted _hook?  
"…I say yes!" Allen yelled through the incessant voice of realty-consciousness. It was a vain attempt to break through the surreal veil of arguing voices. _

It was also the second time that night that the voices had inspired decisions involving a certain Hitomi / Tzeitel.

"Yes?"

"Yes! Let's get married tonight!"

"Good!" Tevye whacked Allen on the back heartily and laughed. "I'm about to have a son! Finally, a son! After five daughters!"

"Yes, yes…" Allen peeled Tevye's arm off of his shoulders and kneeled down. "Let's get rid of this thing first…"

-----------------------

It ended up in Utena's arms.

Utena looked down at her new burden that some reflex had told her to catch. Lazar had thrown it to her when he saw her in the distance, yelling something about her in turn throwing it into a field heavily populated by cows, before staggering off with Tevye draped over his shoulders. 

She had also been given yelled, barely-audible instructions to join them for some sort of something later that evening at Tevye's house.

Utena shook her head and looked down at the gadget-cylinder. It was metal, with several odd extensions and deep clawlike hooks on its anterior end. The word "SHINRA" had been stamped across the side in the characteristic industrial broken-letter font. A green light was pulsating on its side, labeled with the wording "Mako detection".

"Mako? What in the…?"

Utena looked the device over carefully, then tossed it over her shoulder. She had no time for this nonsense.

The metal crashed into the icy alleyway and, in effect, distributed a great deal of gears and small parts across the snowdrifts. Utena looked over her shoulder, half considering picking the mess up.

The lazy and curious side of her conscious won. She turned her back on the mess and ran after Reb Tevye and Lazar.

----------------

As opposites attract opposites, like attracts like. There is no way of telling which will occur in any given circumstance.

This was an occurrence of like attraction. Call it a homosexuality of energies. It is, actually, a very beautiful thing. It was the basis of the mako detector.

A materia now lay hidden in a snowbank, still glowing green and reacting with the mako hidden beneath the permafrosted ground. This particular materia was a violent sensor.

If materia had a libido, and the mako was the source of its lust, it could be said to be a James Bond. It was stealthy. It knew things. Nobody could control it for long. It always had its lust satisfied.

It had an insatiable proverbial libido that sometimes almost got it destroyed.

The materia collected its bearings for a moment, free from the restraint of the machine that had once been its proverbial opiate, and relished in the pure energy it was receiving from the ground. The area around the butcher shop was rich in mako.

There was a greater reserve elsewhere, not far away.

The materia started rolling down the alleyway, weaving in and out of three pairs of footprints that had recently been made in the falling snow. Two were walking side-by-side, staggering badly and sometimes interweaving. The third, smaller pair was running a straight line.


	5. Particle 04: The Chaotic State of Normal...

**Particle 04: The Chaotic State of Normal Causality**

"I love her!"

Van clenched Hitomi's hand fast to his side and threaded his fingers through hers to the point that he felt almost tearing tension in the shallow webs of skin between his fingers. Hitomi squeezed his hand in response, once again with her usual firmness that returned after her initial shock at recent developments.

Jet and Allen stared at Van, still draped over one another's shoulders and leaning into one another in an attempt to balance their weight into a single center of gravity. Allen was at the moment moving from the scandalized stage to the pitying and longing stage. Jet was moving from the shocked stage to the dominative rage stage.

Van swallowed and tilted his head up to stare into Jet's eyes. Looking straight into his heaving chest was not having a very persuasive effect.

"I love her—" he yanked Hitomi even closer, as it were "—and we're going to get married. With or without your permission. Even if we have to run away. Even if…… if… er…"

Van focused on a point on the snow beyond Jet's hook. It was a nice point. It wasn't providing any inspiration, nor did it look in the least bit threatening or as if it was about to snap his head off in one yank.

"…even if we have to fight you," he finished lamely.

"What? Speak up!"

"I said _even if we have to fight you_!"

Van jerked away from Hitomi and crouched into a fighting stance, reaching for his hip. There was nothing there. He thought for a moment with eyebrows furrowed – why that reaction? He had never carried a weapon – and closed his hands into fists.

"Let's go!"

"VAN!—" Hitomi stopped inches away from grabbing Van's shoulder and blinked. Her pupils dilated for a moment before contracting once again.

The atmosphere caught its breath and closed itself to the relative dimension of reality once again. Time ended its relative suspension. Strands of hair and blowing snow that had been moving in slow motion fell sharply and unceremoniously back into their officially sanctioned relative time states.

"…Motel," she finished vaguely.

A state of mutual breath-catching settled over the clearing next to Tevye's house.

"REB TEVYE! LAZAR WOLF!"

The collective of breath decided through some quantum link to abandon post and join its brethren in the ice-shattered outside air.

---------------------------

Utena stopped next to Jet and grasped her knees, gasping. Jet took a deep breath of air moments ago deprived to his lungs and placed his hands on his hips, effectively detaching Allen. The latter staggered a few grapevine steps into a snowdrift against the barn.

"Don't—"

Utena looked up. Her breath, surprised as it was as well, caught itself in her throat.

The scenery had changed. The entire scene that lay before her had changed.

Hitomi stood beneath a tent sagging under the weight of accumulated ice and snow, head down in customary coy fashion, holding a huge bouquet of lilies that entirely shielded her hands from view. The lilies had a faint green glow that cast Hitomi's face into uplight.

Utena's breath regained its momentum and unleashed itself, prompting the lungs to begin a sharp series of gasps. She snapped her attention to Van. Yes, Van, Allen, both of them standing on either side of Hitomi in tuxedos, shoulders, wrists, and necks slack, appearing as corpse puppets in the green uplighting from Hitomi's bouquet and their own corsets.

Hitomi looked up slowly, eyes following behind the progress of her face. Her face was utterly white. Dark swashes of black makeup blazed down her cheeks from her eyes.

Hitomi was crying. Slowly, eyes leveling with Utena's through her lashes… a whisper…

Mouthed words… moving black lips… a silent plea…

Awareness, which had been flying somewhere above the town for some time and which had been increasingly swooping down to tickle people behind the ears with its breath, took a crash landing into the clearing.

Utena gasped and looked around, then down at herself.

_Fiddler on the Roof._

_…I see…_

"MANAAAAAAAA!!"

Utena spun around in a circle, arms following the progress of her body and snapping into place after the latter. She looked in several directions, half-expecting the smug bastard to walk out of the gloom, smirking, hair frosted into his eyebrows dramatically. It was his style to show up at the climax and take claim for the ensuing torture, taunt his victims, and then disappear as soon as the situation began to look unfavorable for his neck or his other vital organs, proverbial though the need for actual life constraints for him was.

It also usually meant that his idea had hit a brick wall at about a hundred kilometers per hour and that he was about to call the resulting wreck his initial plan and brilliant intention.

Hitomi's tears traced tracks down her chalked skin. She mouthed something more.

_Mako.___

The blossoms glowed a more virulent green. Utena backed away from the blossoms slowly, focusing on them to the point that she tripped over something spheroid that had wandered under her foot. She crashed onto her behind. Pain shot up her lower spine from the tip of her tailbone.

The materia rolled over to Hitomi's white slipper and tapped it gently against the instep. Utena noticed—vaguely—that Hitomi was dressed very scantily for the middle of the night in Russia. The idea quickly blurred and was pushed back in lieu of its more pressing peers.

"What in the HELL...?"

"LOOK OUT NO DA!!"

Utena looked over her shoulder and immediately ducked under her arms.

A huge batlike figure dove across the top of Utena's head, skimming her scalp with a cold, wet underside. It crashed nose-first into the snowdrift against the barn, trapping a now sobering and very unhappy Allen at the juncture of its neck and its shoulder.

Utena uncovered her head and straightened. The figure was translucent and appeared to have a bluish, ribbed texture from the inside and the patterns of its freezing. She touched the top of her head, remembering the glide of ice against the skin between a forest of hairs.

An ice glider.

Allen pushed against the bottom of the glider next to his neck momentarily, gave up, and slid beneath it. He scrambled out from under it and emerged from a gap under the side, then stood back and observed the wreck.

The barn now had a brand new system of ventilation that could rival any internal air conditioner advertised as producing a "fresh air atmosphere".

Utena blinked and looked over her shoulder at the tent. She could have sworn that Allen was just…

--------

"Allen! Jet!" Chichiri motioned toward himself. He was standing on the glider's back and holding his hat to his head against the wind, balancing his weight on a bent leg. It was a wonder that he did not slide off. "Get on no da!"

Allen looked over his shoulder at Jet, who was running toward him and making good use of Tevye's fur cap by holding it to his head. He had regained his direct and subdued manner of moving that was far more powerful in gestalt than Tevye's bravado.

"What about the others?" Allen yelled.

"Get them too no da! Hurry! The mako is going to explode no da!"

"Explode?"

Allen looked over his shoulder at the green materia that was rolling in circles around Hitomi's feet. The materia would intermittently make little jumping motions when it rolled around to Hitomi's frontside.

Hitomi still stood with her head down in the odd dress, puppet-corpse Van standing by her side.

"What the—?" Allen made a small step toward Hitomi, thought for a moment, came to no logical conclusion, ran two steps toward the tent, stopped, and backtracked back to the glider. 

"What in the hell is going on? What the hell is THAT?"

"No time to explain no da!" Chichiri grabbed Allen under the shoulder and hauled the taller man onto the glider. Allen fell onto his rear on the ice wing and scrambled backwards onto its spine with Chichiri's pulling aid.

"I'm not even going to ask where this came from," Jet muttered, settling on the ice.

"Yuuto. Helped no da. Froze water. I mean, water master, made this, it froze no da," Chichiri said vaguely. "Utena!" he yelled with more direction and force. "Get Hitomi and Van no da! NOW!"

The materia began to glow even more violently and circle more quickly. The lilies responded.

"NOW NO DA!"

Utena stopped running toward the glider, hesitated, and then turned tail and pulled Hitomi and Van out from under the tent. She ran toward the glider dragging them by the wrists. Van's head still hung limply; his free arm stuck out at stiffly behind him with a limp wrist. Hitomi dropped the blossoms and stared at the ground submissively as she was dragged along, tripping.

The materia gleefully rolled toward the blossoms.

"NOW!"

Utena threw the couple into the glider and scrambled onto its back while Jet and Allen hauled them onto its back. Chichiri turned around to yell something—

And the world exploded.

-----------------------

"That… was your brilliant adaptation."

"Oh, shut up. This was merely a creative springboard to launch into the true chaos."

"Well, I do not deny that it was chaos."

"You think you're really clever, don't you?"

-------------------

Hitomi uncovered her head and blinked several times. She looked down at her rather elaborate wedding dress and arranged her skirts into something more decent, sitting up and looking around. She was on the back of what appeared to be a big ice bird flying over leaden-purple clouds.

The cold was unbearable.

Well, at least things were beginning to feel more normal, not factoring the amnesia that was setting in. Chaos and utter random occurrence were normal. Scripted plots were not. They were an artificial atmosphere. 

Van draped his jacket over Hitomi's bare shoulders.

"No, Van, you'll get sick—"

"MATERIA EXPLODING?" Utena yelled.

The moment of bittersweet sacrifice shattered instantly. Hitomi and Van turned around and settled in a position to watch the row that had been hanging in the balance for a long time.

"Materia does not explode when it encounters mako! It IS mako! That's like saying that water explodes when you add ice!"

"Those were mako blossoms no da. The lilies infused with pure mako, flowers descended from a strain grown in a church in the slums of Midgar, a beacon of light and proverbial survival of the natural in an industrial wasteland—"

"Over the river of fire and through the Gorge of Eternal Peril, we know, but it still—"

"Actually, no, no da. Did you ever actually visit the Road of _Final Fantasy VII_?"

"I have," Allen said, sitting cross legged and brooding with his elbows on his knees. With a regained personality, he was starting to look foolish in a bloodstained apron and furs. "And Miss Utena is right."

"I still think this is bullshit."

"Well, think of adding ice to water, like you said. When you add a lot of ice to a small amount of water, doesn't the water splash no da?"

"Um… yeah…"

"In the same way, you were adding a huge amount of concentrated mako – that was a seeker materia, synthetically produced to have a greater density of mako than it can conceivably hold without exploding no da – that found another addition to its core. It was supersaturated. Just one little trigger, hence… kaboom no da."

"All right, all right. But I never thought of mako as particularly violent."

"You would be surprised no da. Life can be pretty violent no da."

"Maybe it was the violent side of nature or something."

"Maybe no da."

"Where did the materia come from, where did the blossoms come from, why are Hitomi and Van dressed like that, and why did they go zombie all of a sudden?"

"Um…." Chichiri shrugged.

"You know better than to even question a lack of logic anymore," said Jet, arms crossed. "The entire universe is writing its own rules for the sake of plots. If it's convenient for the creator and would make things conveniently inconvenient for the players in such a way that they have to do something…"

"We know," Utena growled. "And on that note, I'm willing to bet anything that this is Mana's work."

"It's not chaotic or surreal enough no da."

"He's probably having a slow day. That or he's finally on medication." Allen made a face and untied his apron behind his neck, removed the knife stuck into the pocket, balled the material, and threw it into the gray, boiling clouds below. He removed his outer coat and draped it over Hitomi's shoulders.

"…um… thank you…"

Van stared at Allen for a moment, and then nodded. "Thank you."

Hitomi hugged the inside of the coat to herself as Allen sat back down. "…you said Yuuto did this," he said. "Kigai Yuuto, the Dragon of Heaven? Why was he in Anatevka, and why did he help you? He's mercenary now. If possible, I trust him even less than I did when the Dragons of Heaven were intact."

"I don't know no da. He just conjured a bird out of water, made it freeze, and warned me in vague terms about the mako reactor. He was 'lending his services' to Shinra."

"Wonderful. How is it flying?"

"Oh, that's my power no da. There are too many of you to transport in my cloak, so this will have to do for now no da."

"If it works, it works." Jet flexed the fingers of his seamlessly returned prosthetic arm. The ice that had collected inside the joints cracked. "We need to find a place to stay. Need rest before we can continue."

"I have another question to ask no da. Did any of you, perchance, see Alucard anywhere? I am sure that you have met him at one time or another no da. He was with me when I first arrived in Russia, and he disappeared when we were on Allen's roof. Or Lazar Wolf's. Whatever no da. Have you seen him no da?"

Van grimaced. "….no."

"The nosferatu?" muttered Allen.

"Not exactly. I think nosferatu are supposed to be a rather animalesque subspecies of the vampire no da. He's a No-Life-King no da."

"_Nosferatu_ is an Eastern term for the vampire," said Jet.

"Are you sure about that no da?"

"Pretty sure."

"Well, in any case, he's gone, and I know that he's still in this Road somewhere. The Hellsing family locks prevent him from traveling no da."

"I have every confidence that he will be just _fine," Allen said, watching Chichiri out of the corner of narrowed eyes._

"I'm not worried about _him_ no da. He's dead useful—no pun indicated—and I'm worried about the people on the other side of any trouble he gets himself into no da."

"Right." Allen tested the balance of the butcher knife and came to the conclusion that it was slapped together in less than thirty seconds by somebody in Taiwan with super glue and a pocket knife. "Are you able to return our usual attire and weapons to us?"

"It'll be cold no da."

"I meant when the time comes. I would like my sword, though."

"And mine as well," said Van.

"I would appreciate the return of my Walther," said Jet.

"…I've never carried a real weapon, but can I have a rapier?" said Utena.

Chichiri grudgingly removed his ice-encrusted mantle and spread a patch of it on the glider's back, keeping the rest pooled in his lap. He tapped the butt of his staff against the ice, balanced the top-heavy instrument so that it stood vertically, and chanted something arcane. The weapons submerged from the blue lake of fabric.

"Here no da…"

Everybody retrieved his or her weapon from the patch, meeting in a center that consisted of the only warmth for miles, shivering, crusted with ice, and breathing milky patches of heated water into the air. By all rights, they should have already frozen to death. By all rights, the flowers never would have appeared in the first place and they would at least be sixty-thousand feet lower and close to some conceivable source of heat.

Logical rights had retired long ago and now resided somewhere considerably warmer than the ice glider above the sub arctic clouds. Some people claimed to find them lounging on beaches and making beginning surfers crash spectacularly.

---------------

It was too calm to last.

Several hours passed in relative silence and without event except for the re-growing of Utena's hair to its normal length, stretched over the aforementioned period. Then the ice glider melted.

Chichiri was the first one to notice that the freezing magic was unraveling and leaving the fabric of the water, but he was too tired and too numb in the mind to try any action until he was hovering for a split second in midair while the water beneath him fell into the clouds.

The second one to notice was Utena.

"AAAAAAAAAAAH!"

Several more voices seconded the notion as everybody began to plummet. Allen, Jet, and Utena fell through the veil of clouds with no way of helping themselves otherwise. Chichiri fell back-first for a few meters before regaining his grasp on his staff and performing a silent incantation that allowed him to levitate.

Chichiri frowned at the swirling pools in the clouds through which three unfortunate bodies had fallen and turned his head to watch Van do one of the things that he did best: force his wings out painfully and manage to tear off any clothing still on his upper body. The boy's wings performed in the manner of parachutes for a moment, yanking him sharply back by the torso and making it appear that he had been hit square in the chest with a canon. His limbs caught up with his body seconds later.

"HITOMI!"

Van dove into the clouds after Hitomi, leaving behind a rather beautiful rain of falling white feathers, as Chichiri half-thought that he heard another version of himself calling out to the people he had more or less allowed to plummet to their certain and uncomfortable deaths because he wasn't paying close attention. 

_Well, yes, there is the Seiyuu Complex to consider no da. Oh dear…_

Chichiri crossed his limbs and hovered in a sitting position, brow furrowed. He knew that they were still, theoretically, in the 'Road' that could have been anything from Russian history to musicals to torture devices for unruly children in an elementary school music class. Guilt would be of little use. The people he was shepherding were all significant, lively, well-loved as characters, and protagonists. Quite simply, they would not die for good from such a cause as falling. It was not dramatic enough. They might die and return to life.

Besides, certain death is always defeated. It is the death that is accidental or foolish, a result of hubris or calculatory error, that is harder to dodge.

_It would still be rather painful and inconvenient no da._ Chichiri plucked a feather out of the air and twisted it between his fingers thoughtfully. He looked into the clouds below. _I wonder where exactly we are right now. _

And, for the second time that day, the world exploded.

------------

Those caught in the air while the world melted and twisted around them, momentarily shocking their neurotransmitters into awe, found themselves in various states of confusion and general cognitive abuse. The fabric of the world changed and intermingled with that of another Road – a collision in imaginary fabrics, the weaving of a new Crossroads.

The world eventually solidified and came into clear ocular focus. The falling commenced in its preceding fashion, though the falling in question were now plummeting toward new landing points.

Allen Schezar and Jet Black awoke in various locations—face-down in a drainage ditch in the desert and face-up in a snowdrift against an insurance office, respectively—and went their separate ways.

Van Fanel caught Kanzaki Hitomi in a spectacular and dramatic fashion and somehow managed to land in a small mountain town with a rustic ski lodge, a casino, and a '2015 retro / NERV themed' McDonald's on every street corner. They rented a small room in the lodge and found rather creative and mutually enjoyable ways to warm themselves.

For once, it was the Gaeans and a Cowboy—essentially, the Studio Sunrise collective--who had received the favoring graces of the deus ex machina.

------------

Tenjou Utena, on the other hand, was touched by a scion of Murphy's Laws and surrealism.

The first thing that she noticed was that her nerves still operated as if she were alive. There had been no crash or spectacular rescue by another flying object (or running into another flying object), merely the displacement of her body to another location. It was either this, or the location was displaced to meet her body.

There was a cold, slick, synthetic-feeling floor beneath her cheek. Utena's pre-visual guess was that she was in a hospital or a school, which ended up being only approximately two-fifths correct.

Utena pushed herself up and shook her head vigorously. The painful screws that seemed to have implanted themselves into her brain responded in annoyance.

She winced and blinked, allowing her eyes to adjust to the glare. The room was a dormitory with two thin-mattressed cots, white sheets and walls, and dingy but clean white shifts hanging on hooks. There was an absolute lack of decor and natural light. Everything glared in halogen tones.

The door was also fortress-grade metal and closed.

"Hello? Anyone there?"

"…we have hit a rather unpleasant rut in this continuum."

The voice was a cool and smooth alto. Utena forced her eyes open wider in hope that the movement would encourage her pupils to perform the inverse.

"No shit." She was finally able to make out the dark shape lounging on one of the cots as a black-haired girl with reddish bangs watching her with a look of arid, intellectual detachment that looked as if it would not change for any sort of shock or insult.

Utena sat on the bed opposite of the girl and dimly noticed that she was already dressed in one of the shifts and eyeglasses. She looked down at her own body and was relieved to see her own black jacket and red shorts.

"I am Yahtouji Satsuki."

"Tenjou Utena. Where are we; do you know?"

Satsuki blinked. It was not an involuntary wink to clear her eyes, but a slow, deliberate blink that signified the processing of a statement to summarize her various mental functions and an annoyance with ignorance in general. "I have reason to believe that we are being held within the confines of a concentration camp, of sorts."

"…WHAT?"

"You are familiar with the concept of totalitarianism, are you not? The Nazis? Stalin? Racial cleansing, the eradication of the intellectuals and the deviants?"

"I know, I know…" Utena sighed. "Let me guess. I'm in here because I am a deviant, am I not? It is the only thing that would make sense. I mean, I'm not very bright or a Jew or something."

"But you do have a relationship with another woman. And you did revolutionize the world and attempt to disestablish all forms of social norm and convention."

"That's really not the story. And I'm bisexual, I discovered. Hey…" Utena looked up and pointed. "How do you know that?"

"I have access to every databank of information in the Nex. You are well known, Rose Prince."

"Yeah. Um, listen…" Utena lowered her finger, then placed her hands on her hips and leaned forward. "Do you know how to get out of here if you know everything?"

"I do not have every piece of information stored in my brain, nor have I even viewed every piece of information for every single theoretical building that could be created in every single theoretical merger. The possibilities are infinite."

"Oh."

"But I am devising a plan to escape."

"Oh. Good." Utena stared at Satsuki. Satsuki stared back. "So… what did you have in mind?"

"First, we have to get out of this confine, obviously."

"There is probably a ceiling vent that runs through here or something. Or a loose floorboard that leads to a basement."

"No, already analyzed. Nor is there a window, if that was your other hope. We are underground."

"Underground?!"

"I have already checked every possibility from this point. Before you even ask, I cannot summon the aid of technology from this location. I was carefully placed into this cell, isolated the furthest from its influence. There isn't a wire around for meters."

"I wasn't planning on asking. And what do you mean by that anyway?" Satsuki stared at her silently. "Why am I in here?"

"They ran out of room."

"Oh." Utena thought for a moment. "But if you know that, why can't you find your way out? Do you know what's going on outside? Why we're being held in the first place and what the hell is going on? Is there a war or something?"

Satsuki did not reply.

"…you do, don't you."

"I never said that."

"But you implied it. Intellectuals always play mind games like this, you see. They have an aversion to outright lies because they see it as some sort of a game to tell half-truths and to never be pinned for lying."

"You seem well educated in the theoretical ways of 'intellectuals'."

"I have had my dealings with them," said Utena, thinking in particular of the less savory examples she had met, most of whom were antagonists. Come to think of it, she had yet to meet an eccentric, mind-gaming genius who was not a villain. Miki and his new 'friend', a girl named Mizuno Ami, never did anything of the sort. She preferred them far over the examples such as the one whose name started in an "M" and ended in a "-kage". Ironically, in their own ways they were also the most bloody brilliant. Therefore, they were the most dangerous.

_The crazy ones are always evil._ She eyed Satsuki. _This one is pretty far down that path already, and we have been talking all of three minutes. I don't trust her any further than I can throw her._

"I believe that there is a harvest of those who are deviant, most of whom will therefore be intelligent," said Satsuki.

_You don't know what you're talking about, you elitist little bitch…_

"Right." Utena's expression of irritation grew. "Listen, I really need to get out of here."

"Don't we all."

"Do people ever… I don't know, visit? Take you out of here? Feed you? Showers? March you around in the snow in your knickers and socks?"

"We attend meals and classes."

"They don't work you to death or stick you in gas chambers?"

"Not as far as I have seen."

"No patches sewn onto clothes or tattooing of serial numbers?"

"Just the patches for some special cases. If you would observe…" Satsuki rotated her shoulders and showed Utena a triangle duct taped hastily onto her sleeve. "The number is an indicator of one's 'danger level' to standard society. One is the lowest, nine the highest. Only those rare ones above a level four must wear one of these. They constitute approximately ten percent of the population."

Satsuki was a seven. She twisted her shoulders back into alignment. Utena sighed.

"Oh. That's a relief. Love this place already. So we just sit in our rooms, eat three square meals a day, and parade around in patches. I bet we even have indoor plumbing."

"Yes, though showers last five minutes and are tepid."

"Bullshit. What's the catch?"

"I assure you that we do have—"

"You know that's not what I mean."

Satsuki's stare did not waver. "The intention of this place is reeducation."

"…reeducation, huh. Sounds like school already." Utena linked her arms behind her head and stretched. 

"You do know that I mean rigorous indoctrination with propaganda, don't you?"

"Um, yeah. Learned about it in history. When I wasn't sleeping. Desk was sometimes too damn cold to really tune out."

"You will be well familiar with the idea when you see it, Prince of Roses, though on a more highly symbolic level."

"Right." Utena dropped her arms. "When to we get out of this room?"

"I would advise you to, under normal circumstances elsewhere, watch everything that you say and do. We are being carefully watched. Here, it is through a mirror spell located in the left door-side corner of the room. I can detect it, but I can't do anything about it. Most other rooms have cameras and bugs, you see. The mages don't all have time to waste watching us. I am a special circumstance."

"Mages?"

"Some of the employees here are such."

"Oh. That's not good."

"Some of the prisoners here are as such."

"Oh. Then we can fight them off!"

"There are lock spells all over the place, chains and mental breaks. I have heard rumor of a new invention under works right now that will reinforce the effectiveness of those spells many times fold."

"Oh. That's not good."

Utena sighed and drew her knees up to her chest, hugging them for warmth. "What time is it?"

"Almost time for supper, if my intuition speaks correctly. You will be able to converse with some of us. Perhaps you are familiar with people kept here."

"Probably. I've met quite a few people during my travels."

"You are not allowed to wear those clothes outside the room."

"Yeah, well the wardens or whatever they call themselves can kiss my ass."

Satsuki allowed a glimmer of a smile to tickle the corners of her mouth. It was not a fond or a happy smile. "I can see that you are going to be an amusing one to observe. How long until you break?"

"I've been in worse situations before. Don't worry about me."

"Oh, yes, there was one thing I wanted to mention to you."

Utena looked up from her view of the floor with chin on knees. Satsuki straightened from reaching over to a bedside table and offered Utena an envelope. The broken sealing wax visible between her fingers was rose-red.

"I was asked to entrust this to you. I already took the liberty of observing its contents."

Utena snatched the letter with shaking hands and ripped out a folded note without daring to look at the imprint of the seal. Something small and ivory flew onto the bed with the force of the yank. 

_The Outside World has dissolved from its true shape._

The handwriting was glaringly familiar. Utena yanked the letter taut and read the message over again, hands shaking to the point of ripping the letter along the seams. There was no signature this time.

_Akio.___

Utena growled and ripped the letter to shreds. 

Satsuki observed with the same mild expression. 

"There was something else in the envelope."

Utena reached behind her and felt the ivory ring now lying on the sheets. Upon closer observation, it was a rose signet identical to her old one, right down to the nicks and scratches she memorized with her obsessive observation and subconscious stroking when she believed in its false meaning. The only change was that the once milky ivory had turned black.

Utena stared at the ring in her palm for a long time, angry to the point of no expression.

Fiery threads began to Utena dropped the ring in shock.

"What the hell… what the…"

"Oh, _Lord of the Rings_, I assume."

"_Lord of the Rings_ my ass." Utena picked up the ring and slammed it into the empty bedside trashcan so harshly that it bounced back out against the side of the can and tipped it over.

"I wouldn't throw it away if I were you."

"You don't know what this ring symbolizes. It was mine once. Akio's just fucked with it." She hissed. "Bastard. I thought I had severed all ties with him for good."

"Apparently, he hasn't mutually severed his side of the ties. And how are you sure that it was indeed Ohtori Akio who altered the nature of this ring?"

"Because it's the sort of thing that he does."

"Are you sure about this?"

snake around the side of the ring and form cursive words.

 "Well… not really, no." Utena sat down on the bed again and leaned forward on folded arms across her legs. Her wrists went slack. "Akio… well, part of his weakness is that he has no power of his own. He relies on illusions. So I assume that this whole thing is just an illusion. Hell, you might be an illusion along with this whole damned place. I have no way of knowing for sure. And on that note…" Utena looked at Satsuki suspiciously. "Who gave you this?"

"It was merely on the table when I arrived with instructions on a Post-It note that it be entrusted to you."

"Oh."

Utena sighed heavily and dropped her head in thought once again. "…how long do you think until dinner?"

"I think all the time, so it is matter of how long it is until dinner occurs."

"I mean… how long until dinner occurs?"

"Unknown."

"Oh. Great. What happens after dinner?"

"Since today is Thursday, we are encouraged to read assigned books and join for a heavily-moderated book discussion."

_Oh. Fun._ "What is the book this week?"

"I didn't bother to read it. But the conversations and remarks alone make it worth going."

"But what is the book?"

"_The Bible_."

"Oh." Utena thought about this for a moment. "…OH… _man…"_


	6. Particle 05: The Grail and the Salamande...

In retrospect, a warning is in order. This chapter contains lime yaoi content. Unfortunately, there is plot development during this lime, so it's not something to be skipped over. Actually, you can skip it over and catch on later. There are just clues as to what the hell is going on.

-------

**Particle 05: The Grail and the Salamander**

It was a pleasure to burn.

It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and _changed_. With purple glass resting over his eyes, with this slim, prism-shaped handle of the industrial lighter resting in his palm and the handle in the opposite hand, the blood pounded in his head and his eyes were the eyes of some omniscient illusion manipulating all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic rose signet on his long finger, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the laboratory jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like in the past, to revel in this rebellion and change, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the hall. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning. 

Mikage Souji grinned the calm grin of all men who, if one did not know them well enough, seemed to all the world like the archetype of the raving psychotic, the being walking the fine line between utter brilliance and stark raving dementia.

One of these 'ones' was standing right next to him.

"Are you fucking _insane_?"

Mikage did not move his gaze from Nemuro Memorial Hall, now burning for the second time in the span of approximately a hundred years. He loosely grasped the lighter behind his back and watched the fireflies over the top of his sunglasses, the lavender-tinted lenses reflecting the glowing particles dancing in the wind.

"Yes."

"You—you've got to be kidding me." Akagi Ritsuko continued to gape at the spectacle. "That's years upon years of research. The entire library, the computers, the data… the…"

"Necessary to hide from the prying eyes of those who persecute the literate."

"You bastard. The literate are safe so long as they remain cognizant only of what the regime wishes them to think. This is insanity."

"Well… it's too late now."

Ritsuko turned back to the flames and sighed. The only scrap of data she had on her when the order to evacuate was given was a password to a rather obscure and, for that matter, infected program that she was going to fix later that afternoon. It was of little use anyway. It was a screen saver that everybody liked and petitioned to have placed back on the file share server. She had not thought to gather any of her other folders of data for the number of times that evacuation drills had been given in the past week.

_That was part of his plan. Hardly any of us bothered to escape with data or anything. The bastard…_

"We could have buried the data. Hidden it. Feigned illiteracy. There were other options, Mikage. You know it."

"What, buried everything in one huge communal heap somewhere in a field? Wait until it was over and sort it all out?"

"_Yes_!"

"Oh dear. If only I had seen that earlier."

Ritsuko opened and closed her mouth in shock. She was trying to think of a response.

"Besides," said Mikage, "our names are plastered all over everything we would bury. What if the regime would find it?"

"We would erase the evidence linking it to us."

"Fingerprint testing."

"For God's sake, Mikage, do you honestly think that they would dust every single solitary little piece of paper and search for fingerprints?"

"They have shown themselves to be very bored people."

"…" Ritsuko crossed her arms. "…years."

"Years."

"Upon years."

"Millions of dollars."

"And why the hell did you, of all people, have the right to do this?" Ritsuko glared at Mikage. "You're not even supposed to be here, illusionary body. You were supposed to disappear. _Ping__. Like that. This hall was finally discovered to be the wreck you made it last time and rebuilt on a huge budget and grants from—"_

"No less than twenty of our partners."

"—no less then twenty of our partners—and then you come right back along, waltz into our projects, and torch it again. How can you even conceive doing that?"

"I think it's touchingly ironic."

"You would." Ritsuko sighed heavily and stared at the building. The years of her research, nights staying up after hours in the NERV branch, hours and hours of headaches, the bad coffee, the constant lack of sane assistants and partners... all wasted, all gone up in flame, now ashes blowing into her face and singing her eyebrows.

Whoever said 'fire erases everything' had his head screwed on considerably straighter than this child standing next to her with a lighter.

"But we did get something out of this," said Mikage.

"Oh? What?"

Mikage pulled a rectangle of paper out of his back pocket, unfolded it, and offered it to Ritsuko, who snatched it and scanned it over in seconds.

Her flat expression did not change.

"…the insurance claim."

"If I am going to torch my own laboratory, I had damn well better get something out of it."

"This was not _your_ laboratory any longer."

Mikage looked at Ritsuko over the top of his sunglasses and smiled. "And I was going to invest some of the money in a group vacation."

"It's not cute."

"I did not intend it to be so."

"All right, let's look at the glaring logical fallacy here." Ritsuko handed Mikage the insurance form. "You file an insurance claim under your own name for the burning of a scientific laboratory funded by companies the regime wants eradicated. The regime probably controls the insurance companies now."

"Oh, I have that taken care of."

"Do you."

"You see, I file my insurance claims out-of-Road."

"And getting mail out of the Road? The gateway is under guard. Mail is checked."

"Trust me. We'll just have to take the back way out."

"…Christ…"

------------

"Christ."

The group of assorted intellectual-types, agnostics, pagans, atheists, and artists watched Paladin Alexander Anderson with expressions varying in degrees from impassiveness to amusement to rage. To say that they were 'watching' is a very loose term, for many of them had by this point averted their eyes into their own left or right brains or to the walls in boredom or contemplation. Only half of them were wearing the assigned white robe attire, and this only out of a want for clean laundry.

Anderson's lip twitched.

"…JESUS Christ is the answer, Professor Hojo."

Hojo was sitting in a rather uncomfortable wooden chair against the far wall, slumped down with his characteristic poor posture and wearing his idea of his 'white robe', which was his lab coat. He glanced over the top of his glasses with crossed arms and one ankle on the other knee. Anderson was visibly stewing, and he was enjoying it all too much.

"I'm sorry. What was the question again?"

"_Why_—" Anderson said through his ground teeth, "—is there life on Earth?"

By this point the rest of the comfortable study group was watching its dry peer in amusement, waiting for some sort of a response. 

Hojo smirked and leaned back in his chair. "The entire universe is one huge mistake. A chance occurrence. I could go into great detail but the mackerel from supper has given me quite a sore throat."

"MACKEREL DON'T GIVE YEH SORE THOATS!"

"I had an allergic reaction. And I have been meaning to ask, is that a Scottish accent? I thought Catholics were from Ireland. I may be incorrect. My Earth lore is not entirely accurate."

"Not all, yeh kin?"

"Savvy."

"Shut up." Anderson looked around the study group. "Look. Yeh all know why you're here, right?"

"We are the more intelligent and genuinely non-conformist and rebellious percentile of the collective of prisoners and are therefore a greater threat in need of an advanced brainwashing argued from a logical point of view, though this point of view will be pseudo-logical and based upon fictitious fact fabricated to reinforce theory on your doctrine?"

"Meybe. Yer're here, Miss Yahtouji, because yer're all infidels and hell-bound pagans. We are doing you a sorely needed favor. Oh, aye, you think it's all torture now, but when you're saved from roasting in hell…"

"Excuse me." Hojo raised his hand at chest level and nodded. "I have no religion."

"…s' what I said. Pagan."

"You are a moron."

"All right, look." Anderson crossed his arms, still loosely grasping a copy of the Bible, and glared down at his congregation. "I don't want to be here; you don't want to be here. I don't like you; you don't like me. Let's just get this over with quick and easy."

"Sounds like a novel idea," said a man with a mass of curly hair tied back in a high tail and tendrils drifting messily around his poorly-shaven face. He was cleaning the lenses of his rounded glasses on his robe hem. "We'll just give you a few 'Hail Mary's and call it a night. There is a book I wanted to finish."

"NO, Mr. Fassa."

Dryden shrugged and continued to clean his glasses with a tranquil, cocky smirk. "Or I could continue to be amused by this exchange."

"Yeh do that. All right, I'm going to call roll. Just say 'here'. No smartass comments. No, it's not in alphabetical order, before yeh point that out, so pay attention."

No less than five people said 'here'. Anderson growled, pulled a folded paper out of his coat pocket, jerked the paper flat with an angry snap of his wrist, and began to call off surnames. 

"…Knives."

"Yo."

"Kudo."

Shuichiro nodded.

"Mizuno."

"Here."

"Kaoru."

"Hai."

"Kiryuu."

Touga nodded, wearing his characteristic quasi-elitist smirk.

"Fanel."

Silence.

Anderson looked over the edge of the paper irately. "Fa-nel."

Silence.

"A'right. Where the hell is Folken Fanel?"

"Oh, I think he was taken to the Protestant wing," said Touga.

Anderson growled to himself. Protestants. Same building. The system was going to hell in a handbasket. Why anybody had agreed to this arrangement still remained an enigma of the highest order.

"Why?" he hissed.

"Um, pissed the wrong people off, astronomically bad luck, bob's your uncle, there's your aunt, that sort of thing," said Icchan. 

"The poor thing really does have terrible luck." Fuu curled her fingers over her mouth in thought. "More and more I see what drove him to do what he did."

"I wonder." Miki gave Fuu a flat look. "Protestants or Catholics; which ones were more fanatical in torture?"

"A'right, so he's gone. Whatever. He can burn in hell and the rest of ye can laugh at him. Hououji."

"Oh, that would be me," said Fuu.

Anderson completed the roll and refolded the paper. "A'right," he said, putting the paper back into his coat pocket with a gloved hand, "did you all bring your assigned reading? I know you didn't."

"I actually brought it." Dryden set his glasses on his knee and held up his copy of the Bible. "I like to pride myself on being a scholar of all things, and the best way to learn about a religion is to read its primary doctrine. Fascinating read."

"Well, good for yeh." Anderson sat down in his chair and looked around the group. "For starters… well, I know most of yeh didn't read it in the first place, so you're just going to sit there and listen to what I have to say. First off… yer communicating with each other. That's breaking the intention God laid down at the Tower of Babel. You speak different languages and yet you understand each other."

"All right, lads and ladies, stop understanding this man right now. None of us speak English. Stop it."

"Mr. Fassa, I am ten seconds from stringing yeh up by yer intestines and letting the carrion crows have a go at yeh while yer're still alive. Sit down and shut up. Put that damn book away."

"Ah, yes, but if we can't understand each other and yet you want us to understand you, aren't you being a hypocrite? I believe that was mandated as forbidden somewhere in this Bible of yours."

"That is different. I speak the Word of God. And I, as a holy man, may possess the gift of tongues."

"No, that was, I believe, a few people of God's own choosing. Are you committing the blasphemy of claiming to be on their level? To be one of them?"

"Oh, he thinks he was reincarnated!" Utena pointed at Anderson. "You see, he believes he was reincarnated as one of those holy people. He is a hypocrite!"

"Miss Tenjou, shut up; Mr. Fassa… shut up."

"And thus you see the pattern the Catholic Church has followed through centuries of its reign," said Satsuki. She was watching the debate with sardonic amusement. "They fabricate lies that in themselves mandate blind faith and, in return, lash out when any questioning harkens even remotely toward the truth."

"They're attempting to be humorous, Miss Yahtouji, though yeh probably do not know the meaning of that word."

Satsuki smirked. "Maybe."

"Maybe 'they're attempting to be humorous' or maybe 'I know the meaning of the word'?" said Ami.

"I think it's a double-sided comment," said Miki.

"_Anyway_," yelled Anderson with clenched-shut eyes, already massaging his temples with circular motions of his fingertips, "the reason you are here…"

"We're infidels and pagans," said Dryden.

"Yes."

"Bad lot, sort of thing."

"Yes. Good. We've established something."

"Intelligence is bad, yes."

"Yes. Wait, no. Yes. It is when you question."

"Why?"

"A'right, that's it!" Anderson stood up. His already thin temper was being stretched as cellophane on a rack. "Sit down, shut up, and repent, or I'll blow yeh all to hell and be done with it!"

"Hm. I knew there was that sort of business occurring in the clergy."

Dryden could have ripped through the cellophane and fallen onto the rack himself. He was lucky enough to bounce.

"Meybe that sort of thing turns yeh on, yeh sick-minded heathen. I don't know. I'm celibate. I am above that uncleanliness."

"AH, a perfect opportunity for a conversation!" Dryden snapped his copy of Dan Brown's _Angels and Demons_ shut and stood, gesturing to his peers. "The search for the Holy Grail!"

"Oh! I love Monty Python!"

"No, Mr. Vash, a new search for the Holy Grail. Well, when I say 'new' I just mean it recently became popular through some bestsellers, sort of a revival for the 'quest'. No, my friends, this the metaphysical search for the Grail, its true significance and what light it sheds on the lies told to you by the church!"

"So we're going to talk about sex?" said Touga.

"Oh yes, and so much more."

"NO WE ARE NOT!"

"Ah, just have a seat and chill for a moment, Paladin. This will be of great interest to you. Don't you want to inform your church of what the masses are learning so that you can adapt your doctrine to counter it?"

"Fuck yeh. Fuck yeh right up the arse."

"Ah, yes, homosexuality and what has caused its rejection from the church." Dryden made a grand gesture with his arm. "All part of the fabricated lie."

"Fassa, I am so—close—to killin yeh right here. Ah can deal with Maxwell later."

"But you won't, will you?"

"Don't try my patience!"

---------------

_The universe is stationary. Yes, don't forget that. You know things. About physics and stuff. Yeah. You're so much smarter than all of this. Uh… help… dregs of the mind, reduced to dregs dregs dregs… I'm really losing it now…My mind is starving… cannot take much more of this…_

_Um… synchronicity… Jung… Pauli… exclusion principle… synchronicity, causality, why things have turned out the way they have… I'm just fated to suffer all of this shit, aren't I? That must be it. It makes so much sense. Causality my ass… Um… right triangles and… relativity… my eyes hurt…_

Folken made another vain tug at the sheet-dome restraints shackling him to a chair with his head still locked into a position facing a television, eyelids stretched open by tiny clips. The television cast alternating patches of the only light in the room onto his chest and face. It was a very typical imprisonment room with no obvious use or design other than to hold prisoners and remind them, in very plain terms, that they were prisoners and that escape was only a structural-fault-finding moment away if one was capable of free movement.

_If they wanted to be good _Christians_ they would leave me in a room with a couch and white walls. Hm, oddly paradoxical, this somehow Satanic dungeon setting associated with their hypocritical cruelty. No, you idiot, don't blame this on Christians in general. They're good people. Most of them. People are people. Argh. Pain. Circulation. I can't feel my hand. Ow._

"Enjoying yourself?"

Folken strained his eyes to the painful limits of peripheral vision. The voice was behind him.

"Immensely. Is this your idea of a joke?"

Mana hovered in a half-sitting arc around the chair and Folken's waist in a position millimeters from being in his lap. He snorted. "My, you do look funny. Eyes are redder than usual. Having fun?"

"Of course."

"Just orgasm-inducing fun, I see. Well, to answer your question, what do you think?"

"I think it is."

"Oh, it would be, but this is not my doing, per say. Just another merger. Getting beaten with the short end of the stick getting old?"

"It makes life interesting."

Folken gasped. A soothing presence slipped past his skull into the matrix of his mind and stroked it, nuzzling every thought--brilliant, random, or subconscious--that it touched, making him feel as if he wasn't utterly alone for once, worshiping him, reprimanding him, cradling his ideas. This was rapture—this—was amazing—this—was Mana doing what he had tried several times before—

Folken shoved the foreign presence out of his mind. Mana jerked backwards with the force of his own mind slamming back into its skull. He steadied himself and smirked.

The only sounds were the drone of the television and Folken's breathing. Mana cradled his forehead in his palms in reaction to the mental slap and smirked.

"Oh, you enjoyed that."

"Leave, Mana."

"No, you did. Look at you." Mana dropped from his hover and landed sidesaddle in Folken's lap. He stroked the tendrils of hair pulled back behind Folken's ear, allowing the side of the earring to fall onto the back of his hand. "Hmmm…" 

Mana licked Folken's sweat off of his own fingers. Folken swallowed silently and tried to stare past Mana to anything—the television, concentrate on the television, the wall—

"I'm not interested."

"Oh, really?" Mana maneuvered one leg to the opposite side of Folken's waist and thrust roughly, moving further up so that he could tower over Folken and tilt his chin up as much as the head vice would allow. 

Folken caught a groan in his chest as soon as Mana thrust and started cursing himself. As much as Mana was capable of providing dual pleasures to body and mind about which he inwardly fantasized he was not going to give the man the satisfaction of getting him off. Mana had tried this many times. Folken had no earthly idea what the hell Mana saw in him when he could harass any esoteric intellectual in the macroverse, but the man had fixated upon getting him tied to his own bed and screaming.

Folken took a deep breath in attempt to steady himself and clenched the ends of the chair arms. The edge under his claw creaked. There were times when the idea did not sound too bad.

_I wish I was completely straight. Dammit…_

"I think you really are enjoying this."

Mana was grinding his hips down—hard. Folken cursed at his body for having no control over itself. Mana _was succeeding in getting him off._

_I wish I was a woman. He would have no way of knowing…_

"Aw, that would be fun too. But I'd always get to be on top. That's the only problem with heterosex, as far as I see it; you can't take turns being the one inside or getting dick. Goes for lesbians as well, to some degree. Artificial penetration just doesn't cut it as well. Not as close."

"Why can't you leave?"

"You're right. You can be 'on top' even if you are being the receiver."

"I can't even move. How do you expect to even attempt anything?"

"Oh, chair's good enough. It's actually good for the angle and penetration; good for bringing females to orgasm. Oh, well, I guess there is the prostate gland. Besides, I think bondage gets you off pretty damn well. There are crucial parts of your body that are free to move."

"We are being watched, you know."

"Your captors? Oh, they can't see me. It looks like you're getting off on invisible demons or something. Should confirm their theories that you are an unsaved, heathen pagan."

"Mana, despite the primordial responses of my body I do not want to engage in intercourse with you. Get the hell off me."

"Oh, I am getting off on you. Don't tell me you can't feel it."

"Just leave."

"Nah. I'm enjoying this too much." Mana edged up so that he and Folken were nose-to-nose and smiled. Both of their chests were heaving, though unlike Folken's deep breathing patterns Mana's breath stopped high in his chest before being exhaled. 

"Open your mind to me. I can understand the full of you the way humans never can. There will be no mixed signals or misunderstandings. No misconceptions and idealizations later to be revealed contrary to your core beliefs. You won't be so…" he licked Folken's tearmark "…damn alone. I can show you wondrous things."

Folken forced his breathing to level out, though he maintained his grip on the arms of the chair. The heat in his cheeks told him that he was flushing, something he could not hide well for its contrast to his pale complexion. Any sort of blood in his face made him appear as if he was ill, enraged, or seriously aroused, if not two or more at once. It was one of the rare forms of expression he could not force into silence.

"You cannot show me anything you did not leech from somebody else."

Mana stopped licking at his check and hardened his expression, staring at nothing in particular. He slowly drew back and regarded Folken with the same expression.

"…you bastard."

"You know it is true."

Mana punched Folken under the jaw. His head snapped back dangerously as far as the vice would allow, shoving itself into the top rung. Mana snarled.

"Fine."

Mana disappeared. Folken opened his eyes and blinked vigorously to clear the painful flashes of light out of the cores of his optic nerves. He took a deep breath.

_… you pervert…_

---------

"What the hell is this?" 

The pastors and witnessing-folk monitoring the viewing rooms ignored their one collogue who was staring at the video feed from room number 13, in which the occupant was writhing and talking to himself. The pastor in question tapped his pencil against his clipboard and watched with mouth partly open and eyes narrowed in half-thought, half concentration. 

The subject was finally going insane.

"Hey, what's going on up there?" asked a voice.

The pastor lowered his gaze to the junction of the wall and the floor at the prone form of Nicholas D. Wolfwood, bound ankle and wrist with white chord and lying on his side. 

The pastor regarded Wolfwood with distain.

"Oh, nothing, _Brother_." The scorn in the noun was almost tangible. "Just somebody going howling, barking mad."

"Howling _and_ barking? Wow, what a show. What did you do to this person?"

"Well, he's been in our viewing room watching Jack Chick's _The Light of the World on repeat for the past seven hours, but other than that nothing else."_

"Hm, you Protestants just don't know how to win them like the Catholics."

"We do not torture and maim, unlike your kind."

"Oh, I'm rather unconventional. Don't believe in that stuff myself. Nor do I believe in making people believe that who they love or what they believe makes them hell-bound. Unless they believe in killing people for sport or something. But you… you closed-minded people and the tortures and whatnot, you are what make Christianity a laughingstock. You're maiming the true nature of the religion. Doing a pretty good job for such a minority of the congregation."

"Shut up. You've been blinded by pop culture. A 'hip' Bible, eh? Well, I can see why your own fellow clergy rejected you."

"Good thing I ran into you and not their torturers, eh? Hey, do you have a cigarette up there by any chance? Help a Brother out, _Brother?"_

"No, I don't."

"Have anything to drink, then?" Wolfwood squirmed in his bonds. "My arms are pretty damn sore."

"I do not partake in alcoholism. Perhaps I should nip across the complex and get you some Blood of Christ."

"Oh, already been there. It's not for getting knocked off of, you know. Offends the big guy up there."

The pastor rolled his eyes and returned to screen 13. The patron in question had calmed down and was now slipping back into his stupor—common defense mechanism. They all broke down in the end.

"And I was wondering…" Wolfwood edged himself at a better angle to watch the screens. "…you said seven hours, something like that? How long do you leave the people in there?"

"As long as it takes."

"Do you let them walk around? Use the restroom? Eat, drink, sleep? Call upon the powers of aesthetic and angst-ridden torture scenes to prevent those needs?"

"We're not idolizers, Catholic."

"Now, you see, that sort of hostility is just what makes good, honest Christians look like jackasses to the rest of the world. It's true. The vast majority of them are good, intelligent people, and because of people like you the new agers look down their noses at you when you say 'I am proud to be a Christian'. Christianity is almost synonymous with closed-mindedness and ignorance, you see? It's your fault it is that way."

"Mine?"

"No, you and the people like this."

The pastor turned around in his swivel chair and crossed his arms. This was just getting dumb.

"Did you honestly come all the way out here and sneak into our sanctuary to preach at us, priest?"

"Actually, I was here to search for a friend of mine who tends to need bailing out quite a bit, you see. Sort of, ah, ran into the wrong people, I guess." Wolfwood laughed. "Funny old world sometimes, isn't it? The irony. But since I have you here, I thought I might as well unload—"

A hardcover book hit Wolfwood square between the eyes by the edge of its spine. Wolfwood yelped and fell back onto his tailbone. The pastor spun back around and winced—he could almost feel the shatters of pain up his lower spine that would correspond to the Catholic's pain.

There was a crazy man standing behind him in a lab coat. Crazy, he assumed, because his eyes were flat, clouded gray, without any distinct pupil. He also looked mad as hell—hair mussed, flushed, clothes yanked askew.

The pastor had a brief mental image of the newcomer tearing himself apart on his side on the floor of a padded cell.

"Throwing in the book for dumbing down and countering biting satire for the sake of fear of offending anybody! I demand to see the writer!"

-------------

_Oh, great… Mana. I still owe the asshole for the Fiddler mess, don't I? Not like I'm in a position to do anything about it right now. There's no point in even trying to yell at him about it…_

"Mana…" Wolfwood sat up with the book in his lap and glared at Mana. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"None of your business." 

Mana stepped over to Wolfwood and snatched the copy of _The Amber Spyglass off of his victim's lap. Wolfwood sat back gingerly._

"All right," he said slowly. He squinted at the screen 13 and identified its patron. "Mana, what the hell were you doing?"

Mana ran his fingers through his hair. "What does it look like?"

"Oh, so that's why you're in such a pissy mood."

"Shove off."

"Listen, I know that this is a rather difficult idea to grasp for you and lemon fanfiction writers, but have you ever stopped to think that maybe there are some completely _straight people in the world? Say, most of the population?"_

"He's not straight! He's _bi_!"

"Oh. Then again, you can never tell, can you? Well, there was the whole makeup thing; that should have been a tip-off…"

"Cosmetics do not indicate sexuality. Most of the time. And in response to your deduction, theoretically, according to the fiction universe theory all characters would have tendencies toward the sex of every partner with which they had been partnered in fan works—"

Wolfwood stared at Mana, confused.

"…everybody is bisexual," said Mana flatly.

A thin rectangle of stapled papers slipped into Mana's slightly pinched fingers, still outstretched as the result of a gesture frozen with impatience and amazement at the simplicity of his audience. Mana stopped, stared at his outstretched arm for a moment out of the corner of his eyes, and pulled the paper into clearer focus.

"… 'Doom Town'…" He slid the top tract behind the next one. "... 'This Was Your Life!' ...heh…" He smirked. "All right, sub-pseudo-pop culture reference. Chick tracts! I haven't gotten one of these in a long time." He looked up. "Last time it was 'Dark Dungeons' because I was harassing some role players at a convention. That was a great one."

The pastor raised his voice over Mana's rambling. "All right, take this one into room forty-five."

"…eh? What, no personal witnessing? You guys are losing your touch."

"Mana, stop being an asshole and beat it. They're just doing the best they know how to help you." Wolfwood edged closer to a paper shredder under a desk and blindly attempted to push the edge of his bonds into the teeth. "That or get me out of here."

A man grabbed Mana by the wrist as the latter disappeared, replacing the corporeal manifestation with cold air. The man's fingers closed in on his own palm. He blinked.

"…huh…"

"Another mage with a familiar?"

"I didn't see a familiar, sir."

Wolfwood watched the men argue while edging further underneath the dark recesses of the desk and manipulated his binds up and further into the shredder's teeth, twisting his wrists at painful angles. The white nylon rope only caught on the blades in thread increments and snarled uselessly. Wolfwood cursed. 

_Well, I could sit here for the next three days and pull these things apart thread by thread, assuming nobody notices. If I get them thin enough I should be able to snap them myself._

The door burst open. 

Wolfwood looked up to check his visibility relative to the door and, after confirming that he was well out of the line of sight due to a well-placed trash bin, continued sawing.

A disgruntled woman strode to the pastor and motioned his head down to her height. She whispered rapidly while the pastor nodded and gave small affirmative grunts, then backed away slightly as he straightened.

He was not amused.

_What's all this about?_

Wolfwood slashed the thumb-side pad of his right thumb and hissed. The blood seeped under the tips of his clenched fingers. It was going to bleed quite a bit but the wound itself was not serious, merely messy.

_Hope the pastors don't notice this blood. Know I was up to something. Shit… what is this woman so excited about that's gotten him all worked up?_

Something licked his palm.

Wolfwood froze.

"…"

"Sorry to bother you."

The deep voice was familiar. Wolfwood relaxed. The hairs on the back of his neck did not follow suit; there was a deep-setting rivalry between himself and the newcomer as the product of their respective occupations, and though Wolfwood knew that he would not hurt him at the moment there remained the inherent anxiety that came from having a full-blown vampire inches from the nape of his neck.

"You. How the hell did you get in here?"

"Protestants don't use holy talismans to protect their ground as do Catholics, foolish bunch. The holy influence is so weak that I can walk in unhindered."

"Mind getting me out of here?"

"I'll work on it."

"Good. Er, out of curiosity…"

"Yes?"

"Is it true that vampires can taste essence and emotion in blood? Like, they don't only taste the iron and stuff, they taste a person's nature?"

"It is true."

"What do I taste like?"

"I would not know."

"But you're licking my blood."

"No, I'm not."

Wolfwood froze again. He swallowed. Mouth membranes possessed the amazing ability to dry instantaneously.

"Then who's licking my palms?"

"Oh, that is just the Police Girl. She's dying of thirst."

"…oh."

"You're quite lucky that you cut your palm and we detected the blood. She was about to go into the bloodlust. Then it would have been your neck."

"Oh."

"Probably severed from your body."

"Ah. Sounds delightful. So, uh… were you planning on getting me out of here?"

"I did say that I was working on it, didn't I?"

"But don't you have a knife or something? My guns are on that desk over there. My cross is in the corner. Just let me have those and I'll take care of myself."

Wolfwood looked over his shoulder. The dark recess beneath the desk was populated with Mephistophelian presences and a pair of red eyes.

It was getting very crowded.

"Sound good? I'll let you have all the blood you want."

The eyes did not react. A second pair of eyes opened from the area around Wolfwood's wrist and lifted to his own. The light slanting in over the desktop illuminated a fraction of a bloody chin and the reddened tips of fangs next to the seemingly membrane-thin skin around his veins.

"Do you really mean that?" asked the second voice.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

El legalo jazzo (in itself obligatory): on top of everything else I have ripped off (such as the Chick tract references), the first three paragraphs of this chapter were copied word-for-word from the first chapter of Ray Bradbury's amazing _Fahrenheit 451. My copy of this book has disappeared for some reason. I searched my entire room for it, but it is not showing itself. Irritates me, that it does. I don't know where it went. I have a theory that I left it in an airport somewhere, because I have a memory of trying to read it on an airplane and getting airsick as a result. I get carsick from reading, but seldom airsick. Must have been a rare occurance._


	7. Particle 06: Closer to God

**Particle 06: Closer to God**

War with God is seldom a good idea.

Such was the contemplation of one man sitting on his cot in an obligatorily dark cell.

Ikari Gendou finished cleaning the lenses of his glasses with his gloved fingertips and pushed them back in front of his eyes in characteristic one-fingered gesture, clutching the pointing wrist with his other hand. 

His wrists were bound with zip-ties.

_Yui…_

---------

The doors burst open again.

Wolfwood looked up sharply from having his hands lavishly licked, the appendages in question still bound behind his back at angles that hurt his shoulders. 

_…Sir!_

Integral Hellsing and Walter C. Ddollneazz strode into the room, the former in front of the latter, while all of the pastors and volunteer witnessers stood defensively, many half-crouched as if ready to pounce or flee at the slightest change. 

Silence. The only sound was a printer's components whirring back and forth with intermittent noises and stops.

The initial shock died down. Nerves tuned to a steady tightness. 

Integral smirked, fully satisfied.

The printer groaned as it dropped its page. The page dropped into the pan, edges clicking against the sides, as the printer sucked another page into its reel.

Pastor Dan, Wolfwood's buddy of odd sorts, cleared his throat.

"May we help you?"

Integral made a small noise of 'Huh!' and gestured behind her back to Walter. Walter pulled the manila folder out from under his arm, allowed it to flap open on his palm, searched its contents, and handed a paper to the knight.

"Pure Soul Protestant Unit, sector 7-G, you are hereby under the direct control of the Hellsing Organization. We are taking control of your operation."

"…WHAT?"

"The order has already gone through," said Integral. She appeared to be pleased with the turn of events. "This is the official order, signed by the Royal Knights and by your superior."

"But—but—"

"Your superior was far from being the Christian patron you thought he was." Integral smirked; she was clearly enjoying this. "You were only allowed to follow through with this on his money to torture his select enemies. The ones initially turned into you were his."

Integral offered the paper to Dan. Dan snatched the paper from her gloved fingers and scanned the type. He dropped the paper to his side after a moment and gave her a wan look.

"…why are you doing this?"

"Because we, like you, are Protestant."  
"…oh." Dan thought for a moment. "Can't we just make an alliance?"

_Bang._

The congregation ducked and covered their heads. White, paper-like dust fell from the ceiling.

Integral lowered her upraised gun arm and smirked. 

"Get out."

---------------------

"Well, that was efficient."

Wolfwood looked around the suddenly spacious control room and edged further underneath the desk. Sir Integral and Walter had gone into the adjoining room, though it would only be short time until he was inevitably discovered. 

Their history was rocky.

"So... eh… are you guys with them?"

"Technically, we are always with them. At the moment, we are acting independently."

"Oh. Then, why are you here?"

"We just wanted to see what was happening. Watch your fingers."

The nylon rope jerked up sharply, pulled taut, and then fell from Wolfwood's wrists. Wolfwood cradled and rubbed his abused limbs to restore circulation. His hands were in the blissful stage of numbness before daggers announced the reawakening of the nerves.

"Don't worry about that. Your circulation was fine. The Police Girl got a snack out of your wound."

"They're still numb." Wolfwood looked over his shoulder at the second entity. "Hey there, Seras."

"Good morrow, Mr. Wolfwood."

"Feeling better?"  
"A little, thank you. I hope you did not mind."

"Nah, not at all. The blood is doing more good nourishing you than running on my clothes. Having a good time seeing what's here? Quite a show, huh?"

"It is nothing new," said Alucard. The light slanting in across the desktop revealed that he was working on his Jackal, moving white-gloved hands over the black casing, intermittently feeling a nook or a switch. "As long as they have been around, Christians have been forcing their views on the rest of the fucking world."

"Yeah; whatever. So, why aren't you helping your master now that she's here? I thought you were bound or something."

"…hm."

"Oh," said Seras, "she's none to happy with Master right now. We're avoiding her."

"Really?" Wolfwood turned around and squinted at Alucard in the poor light. An amused grin began to twist the corners of his mouth. "What did you do?

"Snuck out."

"No shit, huh. How pissed is she?"

The corner of Alucard's mouth twitched into the ghost of a grin. "Royally."

"She's quite scary when she's displeased, Mr. Wolfwood."

"Ah, just call me Wolfwood. There's nothing about me fit to be called 'mister'."

Seras hugged her knees and bit her lip, still fighting back traces of the bloodlust. "Actually, I think you're quite a gentleman, unlike some people here I could name."

Alucard grunted and checked the sight down the barrel of the Jackal.

Wolfwood smiled and ruffled Seras's hair. "Why, thank you, miss."

Seras purred. Wolfwood looked at Alucard.

"So, how long until she lets you get some again?"

_Click._

Wolfwood crossed his eyes to focus on the gun pressed point-blank into his forehead. The barrel was freezing—_no life, no heat, silver nitrate—nitrate? It is nitrate? Ohshit…_

"I-I didn't mean that!" Wolfwood laughed and raised his hands defensively. "Hey, come on now…"

Alucard stared sideways at Wolfwood for a moment before lowering the Jackal and continuing its maintenance. Wolfwood sighed and leaned against the desk leg.

"So, now what do we do?"

"We are leaving."

"Oh. Good. That was what I was hoping you would say."

"After we have some fun with the Catholics."

"Oh…" Wolfwood allowed his shoulders to slacken. "That was what I was hoping you would not say."

"Um, Master, would Sir Integra approve of that? I mean, I know she doesn't like them very much, but without her permission…eh…"

Alucard snapped a lever on the gun with a resounding clack. Seras's expression fell flat.

"Yeah, that's what I thought you would say."

----------------------------------

"So, basically, the Grail is a pussy."

"Basically, Mr. Kiryuu. Basically."

"For what it's worth, I believe the implementations are far more sacred than would warrant the term 'pussy'," said Hakkai. 

Hakuryuu arced his neck around his master's from his perch on Hakkai's shoulder and gave a firm "Kyuu" of agreement.

"I agree with Ryuu-san," said Fuu. She was one of approximately half of the party in attendance that was giving Touga irate looks of varying degrees.

"Oh, his name is Hakuryuu. See? Say hello."

Hakuryuu extended his slender neck to Fuu and gladly allowed her to scratch his ears. Fuu smiled.

"Wow, he's gorgeous!"

"Do you want to hold him?"

"Sure! That is, if he doesn't mind…"

Hakuryuu untangled his claws from the back of Hakkai's silk shirt and fluttered onto Fuu's folded legs. 

Touga looked over Dryden's shoulder at the Bible the latter had broken open in his lap.

"Did you find those passages yet?"

"No; this is a rather extensive volume. You'll have to give me a moment." Dryden brushed his hair out of his eyes and looked over his shoulder toward a far corner. "How much longer do you think our Paladin friend will last before he breaks up this little party?"

Anderson looked up slightly from his burrow in his hand. He was sitting in a chair in the furthest corner of the room from the group, having long since given up any attempt to reason with his class. For some reason, he managed to look even more stubbly and haggard than was his custom. 

He did not look amused.

"Oh, I'd give him five more minutes."

"I'm pulling for ten."

"While I'm looking here, ladies and gentlemen—" Dryden returned his attention to the Bible and flipped a page, pushing his glasses back into position for reading. "—perhaps you should continue that color argument we were having. It would be a good use of time."

"…blue."

"No, green. The evidence is all in place."

"Can't we just say that both colors work?"

"Both, no," said Miki. He regarded Hakkai carefully. "And why are you in here, at any rate? I do not think that you qualify as an intellectual."

"The definition is being given great liberties for this project, I think."

"Yes, but the Church is acting on the assumption that anybody who is reserved and spends a good deal of time reading is an intellectual. It's not true at all. Romantics can be quite the opposite."

"Well, let's extend our group definition to romantics and intellectuals. Just rebels, all right? I'm as sure as hell not brainy." Utena leaned back on her tailbone and stretched out the knots in her shoulders, pressing interlocked fingers in a cradle beyond her knees.

"Fine. We're all just here," said Vash. "Let's just try to have a good time."

"Am I really non-conformist?" asked Hakkai.

Touga leaned back on his arms next to Utena and flicked his hair over his shoulder with a jerk of his head. "You're merely reserved, though society's gentleman in every sense of the word. I honestly don't know. Why are you asking me?"

"Is green or blue the color of geniuses?" 

"I don't know, Icchan."

"Color has no effect on mental capacity," said Hojo dully, sitting against the wall and staring at the opposite side of the room with peripheral vision. "That is a myth."

"But every genius—"

"You will watch how loosely you use that term. Most book-toting pseudo-intellectuals fall far, far short of that standard. Literacy is a minimum skill, as is regurgitation of facts and ideas."

"Oh, well, excuse me, Mr. Hojo. Is green or blue the color of… book-toting reserved people?"

"I think it is green," said Fuu.

"Because that's your color, but you didn't pick it," said Miki. "And before you begin, I am not arguing any more in favor of blue. I have merely found the color to be soothing to the mind."

"My school uniform is for an elite prep school, therefore—"

"I think there's a stone or something called blue something that is supposed to be for opening the mind… or something…"

Vash's voice trailed off amid stares. Knives smirked.

"And the presence of this simple-minded fool is not enough proof that we are separated on the basis of our intelligence?"

"Hey!"  
"What I said," said Hojo.

"But let's look at this logically," said Fuu. "There is a dichotomy of blue and green as the colors of introversion and book-toting. They are equally used colors. Ikuhara tends to favor the blue, I believe."

"I believe that is so," said Ami.

"Hehhh…" said Icchan. "Toting: what a cool word!"

"But I heard that geniuses pick green."

Utena tightened her lips. "Not in my world, anyway…"

"Nonsense. There is no concurrence—"

"But perhaps the wavelengths of light absorbed and reflected by such pigments of blue and green appeal to the complex biochemical-electrical signals within an advanced mind."

Hojo looked at Ami and sighed. "Girl, human consciousness is a mere epiphenomenon of electrical impulses along tissue. Ion pumps. Ions. Difference discharge across a membrane. That is all it is. It is one great mistake."

"Mistake?!" Vash leaned forward and gaped. "But how can love be a mistake? Beauty?"

"If you weren't conscious, you wouldn't give a damn if those emotions existed or not, now would you?"

"So the wavelengths reflected by green and blue pigments somehow correspond with complex electrical signals—they're all energy, aren't they? Green and blue are both in the same area of the color spectrum, so the wavelengths are almost congruent—"

"But following that argument," said Knives, holding up his hand to silence Ami, "those who wear black, which absorbs all, would either be utterly moronic for lack of want for intellectual stimulation, or utterly brilliant for their… lack of need."

"Goths? All those kids who wear fishnets and follow each other like herds of black sheep? Sure. They're really brilliant."

"No, maybe…" Fuu set Hakuryuu on the ground next to her and leaned forward on her knees, tracing a path on the concrete floor with her finger. "…it's a parabola shape. A function. There is a peak around the nanometer markings for blue and green, and then it tapers off at both—"

"Found it!"

Dryden slammed the Bible shut, realized that he just lost his place, and snapped the book back open in an attempt to find the place where the pages were furthest split before the binding settled back into alignment. He caught the page before it melded with the rest of the tome.

"Aha! Now, Father—Father?"

"Oh dear, he appears to be gone."

Fuu sat back on her legs and pushed her glasses up her nose. Touga smirked and flicked his hair once again.

"I wonder where our dear father went."

"You know, we could have a conversation about something worthwhile, like how to get out of here, instead of yammering about color wavelengths and ion pumps." Utena sat up straight and looked around the congregation. "You do realize that we are prisoners, don't  you?"

"Oh, we do," said Dryden. "We are only trying to make our ordeal as pleasant as possible. I am actually quite enjoying this."

"Well, now that Anderson is gone I say that we get the hell out of here."

Utena strode to the door and pulled on the handle. The door was locked.

"…air vents. Are there any air vents?"

"Not a one."

Hakuryuu started chirping.

"Hakuryuu, shhhh…" said Fuu, smoothing his feathers.

The dragon scrambled away from Fuu and clawed up Hakkai's back. Hakkai winced and twisted around to untangle himself from the squeaking, hysterical creature now using his skin as a potential blanket.

"Hakuryuu! What's wrong?"

The lights went out.

"…oh, shit," said Vash.

"Does anybody have a lighter?"

"Can't help you," said Dryden.

"Oh, I'm sure you left it with your bongs."

"So, does anybody care for a round of 'seven minutes in heaven'?"

"Shut up, Touga," said no less than five people.

"Hey, I think I found something."

There was a spark close to the ground. Vash grunted and maneuvered his metal-laden foot to a better angle and pulled on his lowest buckle, striking it against the ground. There was another small spark.

"Hey, I'm getting light!"

"Oh, that's good news. Even I can't see an inch in front of my face in this light."

The last voice was new, carrying with it a musical quality that indicated liberal practice in public speaking. The group stopped dead.

"…who are you?" Utena finally asked.

"Aha, let me see here, I think I have a match on me."

There was the sound of rustling through rough-textured clothing and a small 'A-ha!' A long match was struck against the wall: one blazing arc that flared to life at its apex and revealed slender, bone-white fingers before flaring down to a subtle flame.

The wielder held the match close to his fleshless skull. Eyeless sockets stared back across the flame, casting fluctuating shadows across the white planes of a skeletal face. The bone was somehow more solid and clear than its surroundings, based upon shadow and form and subtle light instead of hard, black lines and tri-color cel shading.

The skeleton grinned.

"Let's get you out of here."

-------------

Gendou's attention was caught by the flare of a match in the adjacent cell, the flame then moving to an old candle in an ornate holder to settle. The occupant, who had through Gendou's entire stay remained supine upon his bed in a state of supposed sleep, shook the match vigorously to extinguish the flame.

"Quite a convenient twist of fate, would you say?"

Gendou shrugged and pushed his glasses further up his nose. The old man on the other side of the bars sat down at his table with the candle and arced his fingers in a cradle over his lips. It was a pose Gendou himself used as custom.

"Yes, fortune smiles upon us."

"Fortune can be coaxed to smile more often, good friend."

"Yes. Tell me…" Gendou aligned himself square with the old man. "Why do refer to me so familiarly? I do not know you."

The old man smiled knowingly, staring across the flame through delicate glasses with flat, purple eyes, aged to near blindness and denied relief even with reincarnation. He had wavy, silver hair tied in a low tail at the nape of his neck and a thick moustache of the same tint. Gendou estimated his clothes to date during the European Renaissance era.

Gendou waited for an answer.

"I know of you, my friend. We are men of like minds," said the man.

"Then you should know the danger of associating with me. Men like myself are better left to their own devices."

"I have a proposition to offer you."

"I'm not interested."

The old man raised his hand for silence. "Hear me. Your organization, NERV, fell as my organization fell. We are both geniuses left in disgrace, in ruin, without funding or means to finish our work. One failure should not stop our grand ideas from progressing."

"Have you ever considered that we failed because we were wrong?"

"We failed because others meddled in our plans. I am not asking you to carry out your plans exactly as they were executed at your last attempt. No, I want your aid in the greatest scientific endeavor of our age."

"Age is rather relative in this place."

"Then, in history. We will collect the brightest and the best minds in the Nexus. We will gather our funds from across the Roads. We will succeed. I am sure of it. Everything will proceed according to plan."

Gendou maintained his level stare. If the man had failed in a way that was in any way like his own failure, he would be well aware of the fallacies and chaos inherent with any plan. They were inherent in the scope that anything that could go wrong, would go wrong, at the worst possible time, in the worst possible way, with the greatest amount of drama, tragedy, and explosions.

This was sounding like a bad idea.

"What is your idea, old man?"

The old man smiled and told him.

"…hmmm…" Gendou thought for a moment. True, this opportunity had been at the forefront of his desires since his youth, though he had always been aware that the stakes were higher than a student on morphine and that the chaos curves thrown everywhere would be sure to shoot the project through the gut. This sort of gray area even he thought impossible to control, though there were times when he thought that the Eva Project was going to be impossible. The doubt he had shown nobody. 

The Human Instrumentality Project had been 'impossible' as well, though there were times when he wondered if things would have been better if it had been impossible after all.

…though this just sounded like fun.

_Revenge on the world? Sure. Why not. You're doing nothing else with your second life._

"We might be able to resurrect your wife."

Gendou snapped his gaze to the old man, the latter of whom was smiling winningly. He knew that he had Gendou hooked.

"All right. I'm in. May I have your name?"

"Ah, forgive me. I must have forgotten to introduce myself. I know everything about you, Mr. Ikari. It hardly seems fair for my identity to remain an enigma."

"Hm."

The old man nodded cordially. "I am Sir Isaac Newton. You may call me Isaac."

-------------

"Smithers!"

"Um, yes, sir?"

"Who are those lackwits in sector 7-G?"

"Homer Simpson, sir?"

"No, not that sector 7-G, the other sector 7-G."

"Oh, you mean the sector 7-G in the brainwashing camp in which you took a heavy investment?"

"Yes, man, that sector 7-G."

Mr. Burns lifted his eye from the purple and carefully-labeled 'BRAINWASHING CAMP' telescope ocular lens on his desk and sat back in his chair, steeping his hands in front of his mouth thoughtfully. He tapped his forefingers together.

"So, who are they, Smithers?"

"Um… pastors, sir."

"No, look, man! Good god, would I ask about something as boring as pastors?"

Smithers made a small noise of apprehension and concern and leaned over to see what was bothering his master. Through the odd fish-eye lens he could barely see a platinum-haired man—woman?—poking around in the abandoned wreckage of a control room, followed by an older man carrying a clipboard.

"Oh… I believe that's the Hellsing Organization, sir."

"Hell-sing-what?"

"Organization, sir."

"I heard you the first time."

"They're a special British unit deployed to handle the undead, sir." Smithers paused. "They've just left the room, sir. The silver-haired one, whom I assume is the leader Sir Hellsing, looks to be in quite a temper."

"Undead; pish-posh. They're just trying to encroach upon capitalist territory. Brits, eh? I'll show their socialist Parliamentary asses a thing or two." Burns looked up. "Smithers!"

"Yes, sir?"

"Call out the guard. We'll show them who's in charge of this plant!"

"Um… that wasn't the _plant_, sir."

"Smithers, do I need to repeat myself? And while you're at it, get me one of those nifty little Japanese drinks with the jelly at the bottom. It's all I can digest nowadays."

Smithers shuddered. "Right away, sir."

"And make sure it's cherry!"

"Yes, sir."

"With a durable straw that won't snap the moment I try to push it in."

_Push it in. Push it in. Ah… dammit, man, get a grip on yourself! Cherry!_

Smithers blinked out of his momentary stupor and mumbled a quick "Right away, sir" before leaving the office.

------------------------

"Was it really necessary to kill everybody in the breaker room?"

"Dead men tell no tales, Priest."

"Yeah, but the place is in upheaval anyway. The alarms are already going off."

Alucard sighed and looked over his shoulder at Wolfwood, the latter of whom was stumbling after him in the dark hallway. "Look, Priest—"

"ALUCARD!"

Seras winced. Sir Integral waiting at the end of the hallway, arms crossed and as mad as hell. She was staring blindly into the dark hallway in the general direction of Alucard's voice. Alucard slowed his striding gait and relaxed, forcing his jaws into a grin.

_Oh my god we are so nailed…_

"Master, hello," said Alucard.

"Oh, shut up. _Why _did you blow the energy reactors for the entire damn complex?"

"Humans are at a disadvantage in the dark. The Police Girl and I can see perfectly in this situation."

"As if humans need even more of a disadvantage against you."

"I happen to enjoy games of hide and seek."

Seras repressed a giggle. _Yeah, as I'm sure she knows really well…_

"Don't even start," said Integral.

"I have no idea as to what you are talking about, Master," said Alucard.

"I'm sure. Is Nicholas D. Wolfwood with you?"

"The Priest? Yeah, he's here."

Wolfwood ran into Alucard's back. 

"And the monk?" asked Integral.

"Haven't seen him since Russia."

"I know he was the one who aided your escape."

"He has his uses at times."

"Right. The Hellsing Organization is pulling out of this mess. There is nothing more to salvage here. Hopefully, a merger will occur soon."

_They're never very useful…_

"Why did we get ourselves into this mess in the first place, Sir?"

"We have our reasons, Miss Victoria. Those reasons have been deemed invalid."

Seras sighed heavily. _Secrecy.__ Great._

"Fine. Come on, we can access the main hallway if we take a shortcut through a cell block."

---------------

"Original sin is knowledge, I think."

"I still maintain that a fundamentalist view of original sin, as is shown here, is lust overriding blind ordinance to God's rules. It is succumbing to one's inner feelings and core instincts over blind adherence to a doctrine."

"You mean eating when you're hungry?"

"Vash, why the hell are you in this group?"

"Speaking of blind, Mr. Skellington, could you move that flame a little further back this way, if you don't mind?"

"Sorry, I must see the way up here. Just follow the person in front of you and you'll be fine."

"Yeah. Um, I was meaning to ask, Mr. Skellington—"

"Jack is fine."

"—Jack…" Miki nodded. "How did you get into that room unwarranted? Did you see where Anderson went?"

"Anderson? Don't know the fellow." Jack laughed. Several people hissed for his silence, an order he did not heed. "I—oh, don't worry, this place is abandoned—merely slipped in as a priest of some sort was slipping out, whom I assume is this 'Anderson', took his keys, and listened to your conversation. Your dragon friend detected my presence before any of you did. Seems not to like me very much."

"Ah, he's just nervous around strangers," said Hakkai.

"He was fine with me," said Fuu.

"That's all right. It's my job to be scary."

"But what I was saying about original sin…" said Dryden.

"It's a myth. The entire Bible is a myth. Religion is a myth. For all logic's sake, it's a book, and people assume that it is absolute truth! Who cares as to the interpretation of the book? The book has no substance in the first place!"

"Textbooks are books as well, Professor Hojo."

"That is different. There is scientific fact backing up all of their facts."

"How do you know?" Dryden leaned close to Hojo. "Were you there with every discovery? How do you know that every bit of documentation isn't created, that science in itself isn't a huge conspiracy of a religion, that someday scholars will not look back on your labs as they do at ancient tombs and talk of how blindly these scientists surrendered their faith to a religion worshiping a mechanical universe?"

"…because I've been in a lab and have seen these theories proven firsthand."

"Are you sure?"

"God damn, yes, I'm sure! Get away from me!"

"Well, even if there is a God," said Satsuki, "the Bible was written by human hand."

"Ah, precisely, but just for argument's sake, what _is_ original sin?" asked Touga.

"That is the revelation I was about to make," said Dryden.

"Oh, Christ, here we go…" grumbled Utena.

"Original sin is a lie fabricated to place guilt and suspicion on the very forces that drove the pagan religions: carnal lust and love, enlightenment through these things – why, sex was once sacred and holy instead of being dirty as mandated by the church. And in mandating it dirty the enlightenment that came from sex was avoided—that which might stray people from the absolute teaching of the church into their own world of self discovery in the moment of orgasm."

"Did you just say something about self discovery in _orgasm_?"  
"Let me finish. To seize the apple is to seize knowledge, forbidden as is sex, spoken in the same curse with original sin. Let us feast in rosy flesh. It all fits."

"You've been reading Dan Brown again."

"I thought I made a point of the fact that I was earlier. And it makes perfect sense. It is a perfect circle. Original sin is, essentially, the taboo placed to prevent discovery that Christianity might not be the absolute answer."

"And how would you know? Aren't you a virgin?"

Touga smirked at Dryden in the darkness. Dryden smirked back and shrugged.

"And what have you to say about this? Does it really get you closer to God?"

"What, fucking like animals, to feel somebody from the inside? Fixing my flawed existence through sex?" Touga laughed. "Yes."

"Oh god…"

"Yes, Tenjou, exactly."

"So you're saying that everybody should have more sex to gain enlightenment?"

"I don't know." Touga leaned very close to the general source of Utena's voice. "Do you want to find out?"

_Smack._

Dryden started laughing.

"Children, let's play nice…" said Vash.

"And what you were spewing about science," hissed Hojo, "applies to your little thriller novels as well."

"Silence," said Jack.

The group fell into silence, Touga nursing his cheek. Jack crept to an iron door in characteristic long-legged, graceful fashion and listened at the keyhole.

"I think I hear voices."

A gun went off inside the room.

---------------

Touga's speech: Nine Inch Nails – "Closer". Not my poetic words of genius.

Dryden's research on original sin and the Holy Grail is the result of he, like myself, reading _The Da Vinci Code_ by Dan Brown. 


End file.
